Celtic Mythology and Religion

212 CELTIC MYTHOLOGY AND RELIGION.
builders, so Mr. Fergusson suggests,
what a pity it
was to hide away such handsome structures under a
mound of earth or cairn of stones ? Added to this
may be taken the circumstance that some unfinished
mounds must have existed, which would still further
suggest the idea of leaving the mere foundation of
stones bare without any mound superimposed. Mr
Fergusson amply proves, in opposition to those
theorists who hold that all these structures, especially
dolmens, were once covered by mounds which the
progress of agriculture and building removed, that
such could not have been the case with most of
them. An examination of our Inverness-shire
circles would show that many of them, such as
Druid Temple, were never anything but three
concentric circles,
and never had a trace of mound
or cairn. Callernish is a standing disproof of this
theory, that circles and avenues are merely dismantled
chambered cairns ;
uncompleted cairns, that is,
they may have been
cairns whose foundations
were laid, but they certainly were never covered
by stone or earth. Mr. Wakeman, the eminent
Irish archaeologist, points out that not only were
dolmens and circles built bare—without superstructure—but
that, instead of the progress of time
and cultivation denuding them, they have actually
in many cases been covered with moss to a depth
which, from the well-known rate of growth of peat,
makes them at least some four thousand years old.
Mr. Wakeman also says :
" From the stone cist