Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

BILN NA CAILL'CH. 401
says no more about this great cairn, why make more of it.
Let it have been erected when, and by whom, and why,
it may, it has indeed been an enormous monument; and,
having the merit of being the only one in Scotland in
such a situation and of such dimensions, it well deserves
to have its natural obscurity increased by a tedious an-
tiquarian discussion.
It is certainly possible that this immense cairn may
have been erected over a Norwegian Princess, as the
Highland tradition says; but we have heard so little of
the honours paid to females after the primitive periods of
the Scandinavian and German people, that we may be
allowed to doubt. The age of Chivalry seems to have
expired with them, when, after their settlements in this
country, they underwent that revolution of manners
which may be considered as a step towards refinement;
just as, in parallel circumstances, though far different
ones, it vanished with knight errantry and the usages of
the^round table. It is more likely to have been the cairn
and monument of some powerful Chief. I noticed, when
speaking generally of Cairns, in Arran, that the magni-
tude of the heap was commonly a sign of the importance
of the personage ; a rule which seems to have pervaded
all antiquity where this was the fashion of sepulture, and
of which the records seem to have been preserved in the
Troad as on the plains of Asia. If this was an usage with
these almost unknown nations, it was a law of the Scan-
dinavians; and the positive enactments and ascertained
fashions of this people, confirm the conjecture as to those
from whom they appear to have descended, and whose
customs, in so many other points, they preserved. It is
said that Odin ordered large barrows to be erected to
preserve the memory of Chiefs ; and Olaus Wormius,
who is our authority for this, says that the tomb of Haco
was " Collis spectatse magnitudinis."
VOL. III. D D