DeDanaan

Filed by Aine MacDermot

Cairn : (Middle English; cárne, from Scottish Gaelic; cárn, from Old Irish) a manmade pile of stones. They are nearly always in uplands, on moors or mountain tops. In prehistoric times it was usually erected over a burial. A barrow is sometimes called a cairn. They are built for several purposes:

*To mark a path across stony or barren terrain, and across glaciers.
*To mark the summit of a mountain.
*To mark a burial site, or in commemoration of the dead.
*Some are also merely sites where a farmer has removed large amounts of stone from a field.

Additionally cairns have been used to commemorate all kinds of events from sites of battles to places where a cart has tipped over.

They vary from loose, small piles of stones to elaborate feats of engineering. In some places, games are regularly held to find out who can build the most beautiful cairn. The word can take in various types of hill, and natural stone piles. Naturally, due to the idea’s simplicity, cairns can be found all over the world in alpine or mountainous regions.

The present-day traditions of building cairns emerged from the Bronze Age habit of putting cists into cairns, which would be situated in conspicuous positions, often on the skyline above the village of the deceased. These cairns are still to be found, but are often much bigger than modern day ones in Scotland.