"Cairn" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... best! You cannot hinder me! I have spells could change the whole of ye to a cairn of grey stones! (Makes signs ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... a precipice, on the bare crest of which stood a heap of stones piled like a column—the remains, probably, of a cairn. On this commanding point Nicholas perceived a female figure, dilated to gigantic proportions against the sky, who, as far as he could distinguish, seemed watching him, and making signs to him, apparently ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... of yon hill?" said the shepherd's wife, pointing to the highest crag of Cairn Table. "Keep that in yir e'en, and ye'll come to John Brown's grave." Our way lay through a pathless moor, covered deep with grass, rushes, and moss; and we had asked direction to the spot where the martyr's ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... for one month after another till three months had passed, and the fourth was far advanced. She heaped a cairn of stones over his tomb, which formed the hill on which the Cathedral of Revel now stands. One day she was carrying a great stone to the cairn, but found herself too weak, and let it fall. She sat down on it, and lamented her sad fate, and her tears formed the ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... occasionally a heavy farm-wagon crossed the country bridge which spans the ravine just above us, its rumblings echoing in the quarried glen for all the world like distant thunder. Before turning in, each built a cairn upon the beach, at the point which he thought the water might reach by morning. The Boy, more venturesome than the rest, piled his cairn highest up the slope; and when daylight revealed the fact that the river, in its four-feet rise, had crept nearest his ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... for the hills o' the cromlech and cairn, Where blossoms the thistle by hillocks o' fern; There Freedom in triumph an altar has made For holiest rites in ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... this time he was cross the ford, Whare in the snaw the chapman smoor'd; And past the birks and meikie stane, Whare drunken Charlie brak's neck-bane; And thro' the whins, and by the cairn, Whare hunters fand the murder'd bairn; And near the thorn, aboon the well, Whare Mungo's mither hang'd hersel.— Before him Doon pours all his floods; The doubling storm roars thro' the woods; The lightnings flash ...
— Tam O'Shanter • Robert Burns
... actually brought the stones for the erection of their landmark with them in one of their galleys. The galley containing the stones, and two others to aid it, pushed on beyond Sciathus to a small rocky islet standing in a conspicuous position in the sea, and there they built their monument or cairn. The detachment then returned to meet the fleet. The time occupied by this ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Webb, George Curzon, the Chesterfields, the Hayters, Mary Gladstone, and a lot more have been here. I went north, too, to the land of Thule and was savagely happy. I wore no hat—no gloves—I bathed, fished, boated, climbed, and kissed the earth, and danced round a cairn. It was opposite Skye at a Heaven called Loch Ailsa.... Such beauty—such weather—such a fortnight will not come again. Perhaps it would be unjust to the crying world for one human being to have more of the Spirit of Delight; but one is glad to have tasted of the cup, and while ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... our ills. Ignorant we must always be of much that we need to know, but there is no excuse for remaining ignorant of what somebody on earth knows or has known. Rich treasure lies hidden in what President Gilman called "the bibliothecal cairn" of scientific monographs which piles up about a university. The journalist might well exchange the muckrake for the ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... reel at his suggestion, as it was his idea that he could fasten one end here before he left and by paying it out through the end of the prospector lay a telegraph line between the outer and inner worlds. In my letter I told him to be sure to mark the terminus of the line very plainly with a high cairn, in case I was not able to reach him before he set out, so that I might easily find and communicate with him should he be so ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Argyleshire, referred to by him, at the late meeting of the British Association in Edinburgh, as being in the form of a serpent or saurian. The mound, says the Scotsman, is a most perfect one. The head is a large cairn, and the body of the earthen reptile 300 feet long; and in the centre of the head there were evidences, when Mr. Phene first visited it, of an altar having been placed there. The position with regard to Ben Cruachan is most remarkable. The three peaks are seen over the length of the reptile when ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... was, As cantie as a kittlin; [lively] But och! that night, amang the shaws, [woods] She gat a fearfu' settlin'! She thro' the whins, an' by the cairn, [gorse, stone heap] An' owre the hill gaed scrievin'; [careering] Where three laird's lands met at a burn,[17] To dip her left sark-sleeve in, ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... few days. I climbed Skiddaw during the night with one of Mr. Pettitt's sons, who was a geologist and a landscape-painter also. When we got to the top of the mountain we were enveloped in a thick mist, which remained till we descended; but I lay down in my waterproof on the lee side of the cairn, and slept in happy oblivion ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... land," he cried, "and I'll never leave it. D'ye see yon broun hill wi' the lang cairn?" and he gripped my arm fiercely and directed my gaze. "Yon's my bit. I howkit it richt on the verra tap, and ilka year I gang there to make it neat and ordlerly. I've trystit wi' fower men in different pairishes that whenever they hear o' my death, they'll cairry me up yonder ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... bleak hills and towering cliffs in this locality were a favourite haunt of the peregrine falcon, the cliff hawk, while the blue rock dove, and Baillon's crake have been found in the district. Bosigran lies just under Cairn Galva, whose boldly-formed outline is a conspicuous landmark. Just beyond Porthmeor is the Gurnard's Head, the finest and most romantic point on the north side of the Land's End, and one of the show ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath
... surmise and uncertainty. Often, when yet a boy, and engaged in fishing in the King's Burn, have we mounted these pyramids, and felt that we were standing on holy ground. "Oh," thought we, "that some courteous cairn would blab it out what 'tis they are!" But the cairns were silent; and hence the necessity we are under of professing our ignorance of what they refused to divulge. But there is a large opening in the side of one of these cairns, respecting ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... all right; I left my traps here and went fifty yards further on up the slope, and there's another cairn there—very lucky! I had a job to find my way back here in the mist, though. However, I'm on the right track now. Wonder what's become of those Cambridge fellows. They're sure not to be up to my tips, and most likely they're wandering ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... formed like an Esquimaux hut on the highest point of Appledore, was built there by Captain John Smith and his men as a memorial of their discovery of the islands. This heap of stones is a veritable cairn, such as climbers of the Alps build on the summits of those peaks which they have ascended for the first time. It is customary in such cases to insert a champagne bottle among the stones, containing the card of the fortunate explorer; but perhaps Captain ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... a blither setting off from the Giant's Cairn. All the remaining guests were gathered to see them go. There was not a mote in the blue air between Outledge and the crest of Washington. All the subtile strength of the hills—ores and sweet waters and resinous ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... from the kindling surges, I rode on a bridle-path, Much wondering to see upon all hands, of wattle and woodwork made, Thy bell-mounted churches, and guardless the sacred cairn and the earth, And a small and feeble populace stooping with mattock ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... yon misty cairn their answer tost: "Minstrel! the fame of whose romantic lyre, Capricious-swelling now, may soon be lost, Like the light flickering of a cottage fire; If to such task presumptuous thou aspire, Seek not from us the meed to warrior due: Age after age has gathered son to ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... look their last upon the Erebus and Terror, give them three cheers, and go away into the desolate waste—to die! Point Victory their object. They gained it, and then their helplessness came and stared them in the face. In a cairn on the point Fitzjames placed a brief record, and that is all. They have only food for a month more, and day by day the strong are growing weak and the ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... dark when Kit and Tom, the shepherd, stopped to rest behind a cairn on the summit of Swinset moor. Close by, the two score sheep stood in a compact flock, with heads towards the panting dogs. They were Herdwicks, a small, hardy breed that best withstands the rain and snow that sweep the high fells in the lambing ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... instincts, and partly from other circumstances, he started with her to California. An account of that tedious journey. How it was a dreary, dreary waste in her memory, only a blank plain marked by a little cairn of stones,—a child's grave. How she had noticed that little Willie failed. How she had called Abner's attention to it, but, man-like, he knew nothing about children, and pooh-poohed it, and was worried by the stock. How it happened that after they had passed Sweetwater, she was walking ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... laid out on his shield, and he was buried in a cairn there. Many men grieved for him, for he had many ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... was at Redruth, near which is the lofty hill called Cairn Brea, whence they obtained a view over an extensive mining district. The country around, covered in many places with enormous blocks of granite, looked barren and uninviting in the extreme, and ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston
... Bonavista Bay, Newfoundland, shortly after the 400th anniversary of Cabot's voyage. King's Cove, landlocked as a hole in a wall, mountains meeting sky line, presented on one flat rock in letters the size of a house claim that it was here John Cabot sent his sailors ashore to plant the flag on cairn of bowlders; but when I came back from Newfoundland by way of Cape Breton, I found the same claim there. For generations the tradition has been handed down from father to son among Newfoundland fisher folk that as Cabot's vessel, pitching and rolling to the tidal bore, came scudding into King's ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... hill to the north?" the lad asked. "Now, that is Sliab Moduirn," Ibar answered. [3]"Let us go and get there," said Cuchulain. Then they go on till they reach it.[3] [4]When they reached the mountain, Cuchulain asked,[4] "And what is that white cairn yonder on the height of the mountain?" "And that is Finncharn ('the White Cairn') of Sliab Moduirn," Ibar answered. "But yonder cairn is beautiful," exclaimed the lad. "It surely is beautiful," Ibar answered. "Lead on, fellow, till we reach ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... evening, forspent with toil, they ceased. But Heracles by the might of his arms pulled the weary rowers along all together, and made the strong-knit timbers of the ship to quiver. But when, eager to reach the Mysian mainland, they passed along in sight of the mouth of Rhyndacus and the great cairn of Aegaeon, a little way from Phrygia, then Heracles, as he ploughed up the furrows of the roughened surge, broke his oar in the middle. And one half he held in both his hands as he fell sideways, the other the sea swept away with its receding wave. And he sat up in silence glaring round; for his ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... know that he is at the top of Ben Muich Dhui, when he has to scramble no longer over scaurs or ledges of rock, but walking on a gentle ascent of turf, finds a cairn at its highest part. When he stands on this cairn, he is entitled to consider himself the most elevated personage in the United Kingdom. Around it is spread something like a table-land, and one can go round the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... hated and loved and feared, had left the just recognisable ruins of some castles and the causeway built by an unknown hermit or the prehistoric lake-dwellers. A few thatched cabins, faintly smoking, and here and there a cairn of stones gathered laboriously off the wretched fields, were the evidences of present activity. Now and then a man hooted to his dog as it barked at the sheep on the hillside, or a girl drove a turf-laden donkey inland from ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... sole interruption to the dull level of the field of ice. No wreath of smoke rose above the little island; it was manifestly impossible, they conceived, that any human being could there have survived the cold; the sad presentiment forced itself upon their minds that it was a mere cairn to ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... a mile or so they came upon the former campsites of the castaway, each marked by a flat-topped cairn of small stones three or four feet in height. DeCastros was at a loss to explain this. Mr. Wordsley supposed that it was one of the ...
— The Marooner • Charles A. Stearns
... men's eyes go after her admiring. With that she considered that she must soon marry one of them and wondered which; and she thought Alf was perhaps the best, or Hall the Fair, but was not certain, and then she remembered Finnward Keelfarer in his cairn upon the hill, and was concerned. "Well, he was a good husband to me," she thought, "and I was a good wife to him. But that is an old song now." So she turned again to handling the stuffs and jewels. At last she got to bed in the smooth sheets, ...
— The Waif Woman • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Margaret were in the garden, consulting about its restoration. Sydney declared he would come and work at it every day till it was cleared and planted. He would begin to-morrow with the cairn for the rock-plants. ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... "There's another stone cairn here!" he said. "I guess I knocked it over, for I can't tell exactly what it is. You can learn that when you come up with your searchlights! I ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... that after the cremation of his body the Mallas placed his bones in their council hall and honoured them with songs and dances. Then eight communities or individuals demanded a portion of the relics and over each portion a cairn was built. These proceedings are mentioned as if they were the usual ceremonial observed on the death of a great man and in the same Sutta[55] the Buddha himself mentions four classes of men worthy of a cairn or dagoba.[56] ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... have the heart to harm, you an' me. Oh, but I'm light now, since you did what I wanted you. No harm can come between you and Meehaul; for I often heard him say, when speakin' about his faction fights, that no one but a coward would, strike an unresistin' man. Now come and see me pass the Pedlar's Cairn, an' remember that you'll thank me for what I made you do this night. ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... never be coronach cried, or dirge played, for thee or thy bloody wolf-burd. [Wolf-brood—that is, wolf-cub.] The ravens shall eat him from the gibbet, and the foxes and wild-cats shall tear thy corpse upon the hill. Cursed be he that would sain [Bless.] your bones, or add a stone to your cairn!" ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... earlier myth the cauldron may have been her property. As Brangwaine, she reappears in romance, giving a love-potion to Tristram—perhaps a reminiscence of her former functions as a goddess of love, or earlier of fertility. In the Mabinogion she is buried in Anglesey at Ynys Bronwen, where a cairn with bones discovered in 1813 was held to be the grave and remains ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... mile away were the steep cliffs of the river, and at the edge of these cliffs was a great cairn of rocks in which for one night Miki had sought shelter. He had not forgotten the tunnel into the tumbled mass of rock debris, nor how easily it could be defended from within. Once in that tunnel he would turn in the door of it and slaughter his ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... to ascend what they estimated to be the second tier of the Mountains. Shortly after they left camp that morning they came on a pile of stones, or cairn, evidently the work of some European, which they attributed to Bass. They were much elated at the thought that they had now passed beyond the limit of any ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... strong, Clattered a hundred steeds along, Their peal the merry horns rung out, A hundred voices joined the shout; With hark and whoop and wild halloo, No rest Benvoirlich's echoes knew. Far from the tumult fled the roe, Close in her covert cowered the doe, The falcon, from her cairn on high, Cast on the rout a wondering eye, Till far beyond her piercing ken The hurricane had swept the glen. Faint, and more faint, its failing din Returned from cavern, cliff, and linn, And silence settled, wide and still, On the lone ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... 45-54, where the writer evidently traces the origin of the word Gilead to Gal-Ed. We gather from the context that the narrative was connected with the cairn at Mizpah which separated the Hebrew from the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... said the priest, 'over there under that cairn of stones, and bring me down the trap and harness in ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... Horsted, at the point farther back where the Rochester to Maidstone road is joined by the road from Chatham, stands, it is believed, on the grave of Horsa. And about a mile and a half north of Aylesford, a grey old cairn, set on a green sward in the midst of a cornfield, is also closely associated with the first great victory won by English people on the soil which they were destined to make their own and distinguish with their name. In his Short History of the English People J. ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... esteemed of sovereign virtue in curing madness. About two hundred persons afflicted in this way are annually brought to try the benefits of its salutary influence. These patients are conducted by their friends, who first perform the ceremony of passing with them thrice through a neighbouring cairn: on this cairn they then deposit a simple offering of clothes, or perhaps a small bunch of heath. More precious offerings used once to be brought. The patient is then thrice immerged in the sacred pool. After the immersion, he is bound hand and foot, and left for the ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... was fumbling in the tin box that was lashed upon the number four sledge, looking for his notebook wherein he had begun his calculations for latitude, he was surprised to find a copy of the record he had left in the instrument box under the cairn at Cape Kammeni at the beginning of this southerly march. He had supposed that this copy had been mislaid, and was not a little relieved to come across it now. He read it through hastily, his mind reviewing again the incidents ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... on the 11th—a day which the Queen calls in her journal "a very happy, lucky, and memorable one"—her Majesty and Prince Albert, with their family, household, tenants, servants, and poorer neighbours, ascended Craig Gowan, a hill near Balmoral, for the purpose of building a cairn, which was to commemorate the Queen and the Prince's having taken possession of their home in the north. At the "Moss House," half-way up, the Queen's piper met her, and preceded her, playing as he went. ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... first wi' this young fellar, and then wi' that, till soomtimes my heart's fit t' burst. Many a day, oop on t' fell-top, t' thought o' ye's nigh driven me daft, and I've left my shepherdin' jest t' set on a cairn in t' mist, picturin' an' broodin' on yer face. Many an evenin' I've started oop t' vicarage, wi' t' resolution t' speak right oot t' ye; but when it coomed t' point, a sort o' timidity seemed t' hould me back, I was that feared t' displease ye. I knaw I'm na scholar, an' mabbe ye think I'm ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... weary rowers along all together, and made the strong-knit timbers of the ship to quiver. But when, eager to reach the Mysian mainland, they passed along in sight of the mouth of Rhyndaeus and the great cairn of Aegaeon, a little way from Phrygia, then Heracles, as he ploughed up the furrows of the roughened surge, broke his oar in the middle. And one half he held in both his hands as he fell sideways, the other the sea swept away with its receding wave. And ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... as they had left it, and undisturbed. It was lowered from its rude platform, and they laid it in its final resting-place in a grave among the spruce trees not far from her father's lodge. Over the grave a cairn of boulders was raised, and surmounted by a tablet of wood upon which was carved simply ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... and have proved true. Our archaeologists, for example, after long study of the remains, cannot tell us how long ago—centuries or thousands of years—a warrior with golden armour was buried under the great cairn at Mold in Flintshire. ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... was almost the same thing at a mile's distance as the Bunker Hill Monument at half a mile's distance; and unless the eye had some means of measuring the space between itself and the stone shaft, one was about as good as the other. A mound like that of Marathon or that at Waterloo, a cairn, even a shaft of the most durable form and material, are fit memorials of the place where a great battle was fought. They seem less appropriate as monuments to individuals. I doubt the durability of these piecemeal obelisks, and when I think of that vast inverted pendulum vibrating ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Boyne (1849)—an account of the great old barrows of Dowth, New Grange, etc., placed on its banks above Drogheda, he describes at some length the last of these mounds (New Grange),—stating that it "consists" of an enormous cairn or "hill of small stones, calculated at 180,000 tons weight, occupying the summit of one of the natural undulating slopes which enclose the valley of the Boyne upon the north. It is said to cover nearly two acres, and is 400 paces in circumference, and now about ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... labourers in the field of investigation which is only as yet partly cultivated, may each assist, by carefully collecting a little heap of ascertained facts; and it is, indeed, the duty of each as he passes to add his pebble to the slowly accumulating cairn of recorded ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... a very intellectual or spiritual day after all. Went in the afternoon away to the east. Had a good view and a time of devotion at a cairn from which an eagle rose as I approached. Returned to the camp and bought milk and some cheese. Intended to make porridge, but the fire was not good on account of the blowing, so I drank off my milk, ate some bread, and ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... we followed a steep winding path which at last brought us to the top of the pen or summit, rising, according to the judgment which I formed, about six hundred feet from the surface of the sea. Here was a level spot some twenty yards across, in the middle of which stood a heap of stones or cairn. I asked the lad whether this cairn bore a name, and received for answer that it was generally called Bar-cluder y Cawr Glas, words which seem to signify the top heap of ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... impediments, I worked on with all the strength and energy I could command. I knew that in time I could raise the cairn as high as required, but time had now become the all-engrossing subject ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... where the place is that they met, Bryde and Margaret, on the hill where the cairn stands and no man knows who would be the builders. For the lass walked easy and slow to the Hill of the Fort, as we will be calling it, and then turned to the ridge that runs to the right hand, for that way ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... were found on Beechey Island with head-boards marking the names and ages of three men of the crew who had died in the winter. Near a cape of the island was a cairn built of stone. It was evidently intended to hold the records of the expedition. Yet, strange to say, neither in the cairn nor anywhere about it was a single document ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock
... crowding along the spacious window. The dogs barked outrageously; but at last above their din floated, as before, the high wailing cries. A heaping cairn of round-bellied, rosy-pink earthen jars came steering past, poled by a naked statue of new copper, who balanced precariously on the edge of his hidden raft. No sound came from him; nor from the funeral barge which floated next, where still figures in white ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... disappearing to various individuals in a most mysterious manner; till at last a clown, with a few grains of more courage than the rest, loaded his gun and put a sixpence into it, with the intention of stealing upon him as he sat most mysteriously chattering on the top of a cairn of stones, and then shooting him with silver, which is known never to fail in finishing the imps of the Evil One. And lucky indeed was it for pug that he chanced, through whim, to abscond from that quarter; for if he had not so disappeared, ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... saw the Black Man pass the Muckle Cairn as it was chappin' six; before eicht, he gaed by the change-house at Knockdow; an' no' lang after, Sandy M'Lellan saw him gaun linkin' doun the braes frae Kilmackerlie. There's little doubt but it was him that dwalled sae ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... human body. But although these monuments were originally sepulchral, we may well understand that the burying-places of great men, of kings, or priests, or generals, were likewise used for the celebration of other religious rites. Thus we read in the Book of Lecan, "that Amhalgaith built a cairn, for the purpose of holding a meeting of the Hy-Amhalgaith every year, and to view his ships and fleet going and coming, and as a place of interment for himself."(55) Nor does it follow, as some antiquarians maintain, that every structure in the style of a cromlech, even in England, is exclusively ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... and as her clouded brain became calm, it was occupied by one idea, to the exclusion of all others,—prayer for the repose of her dead. The body of the Sergeant was buried near Maume, but O'Malley and his three sons were buried together under the cairn in a long disused churchyard through which the road passed, a churchyard like thousands more in Ireland, where the grave-stones are hidden by the nettles and weeds. Thither, with a love stronger than death, goes the poor old woman every day, and, untiring in her devotion, spends her life reciting ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... attorney did not know, until at last they arrived at a little dell. The night was pitchy dark, and nothing could Ezekiel see but the ghostly figure gliding along ahead of him, all lit by a weird phosphorescent light. In the dell was a small granite cairn, and here the ghost stopped and ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... Bobby, after his custom, walked quietly back to the cairn which he had built in previous summers to mark the grave of the mysterious man that Abel and Mrs. Abel had buried so many years before, ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... on wintry Knock-na-rea In an old cairn of stones; while her poor women Must lie and jog in the wave if they would sleep Being water born—yet if she cry their names They run up on the land and dance in the moon Till they are giddy and would love as men do, And be as patient and as pitiful. ...
— The Countess Cathleen • William Butler Yeats
... to be considered is that of cairn or rock burial, which has prevailed and is still common to a considerable extent among the tribes living in the Rocky Mountains and ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... have said, we let that unhappy lady lie in her rude grave yonder by the sea, but my husband took men and built a cairn of stones over it and a strong wall about it, and there it stands to this day, for not long ago I met one of the folk from the Old Colony who had seen it, and who told me that the people that live in those parts now reverence the spot, knowing its story. Also, when some months afterwards ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... this lake rises a mountain of dark, greenish colour, resembling an immense cairn constructed by the hands of Titans. Upon its summit rests a cloud of white fog collected by evaporation from the surrounding water, which has been condensed by the freshness of the night. The numerous dark fissures distinguishable ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... summits of its fleshy arms are supposed to resemble men's heads and faces. On Tuesday the 5th December we arose at 6 A.M., after a night so dewy that our clothes were drenched, and we began to ascend the Wady Darkaynlay, which winds from east to south. After an hour's march appeared a small cairn of rough stones, called Siyaro, or Mazar [4], to which each person, in token of honor, added his quotum. The Abban opined that Auliya or holy men had sat there, but the End of Time more sagaciously conjectured ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... higher yet, the more melancholy spectacle of empty paepaes. When a native habitation is deserted, the superstructure—pandanus thatch, wattle, unstable tropical timber—speedily rots, and is speedily scattered by the wind. Only the stones of the terrace endure; nor can any ruin, cairn, or standing stone, or vitrified fort present a more stern appearance of antiquity. We must have passed from six to eight of these now houseless platforms. On the main road of the island, where it crosses the valley of ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... only very lately become obsolete in Scotland. The editor remembers, that, a few years ago, a cairn was pointed out to him in the King's Park of Edinburgh, which had been raised in detestation of a cruel murder, perpetrated by one Nicol Muschet, on the body of his wife, in that ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... heart full of pity the repentant gold-seeker hurried toward the cairn. The crumpled little figure, so tragic in its loneliness and helpless grief, was lying where he had left it. She did not stir at the sound of his footsteps, nor when he laid his hand ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... Trenire far out into the country, over wild moorland, or through beautiful valleys, and Pamela loved these drives as much as anything, and felt she could listen for hours while the doctor told her the story of some old cairn, or the legend of a ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... moment as aide-de-camp, had spent the day on horseback. Released in the late afternoon, lodged in a hut at the edge of the small camp, he used the moment's leisure to climb a small hill and at its height to throw himself down beside a broken cairn. He shut his eyes, but after a few moments opened them and gazed upon the camp of Cope, covering also but a little space, so small were the armies. ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... the birks and meikle stane Where drunken Charlie brak's neck-bane; And through the whins, and by the cairn Where hunters fand the murdered bairn And near the thorn, aboon the well Where Mungo's mither ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... of Fuad the son of Brogan," [Footnote: An ancient Milesian hero. Brogan was uncle of Milesius.] said he. "I would I knew where lies his cairn in this great forest that I might pay my stone-tribute to the hero." Soon he found it and laid his stone upon the heap. He climbed to the hill's brow and looked westward and saw far away the white shining duns of the marvellous city from which, even now, the morning smoke went up into the windless ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... keeping as close to the wind as possible. The weather was clear, and at 8 o'clock we sighted the mainland, with Dickson's Island ahead. It had been our intention to run in and anchor here, in order to put letters for home under a cairn, Captain Wiggins having promised to pick them up on his way to the Yenisei. But in the meantime the wind had fallen: it was a favorable chance, and time was precious. So we gave up sending our post, and continued our course ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... and isles, and everywhere are much alike, and bear no very definite marks of the special influence of race, so it is with the habits and legends investigated by the student of folklore. The stone arrow-head buried in a Scottish cairn is like those which were interred with Algonquin chiefs. The flints found in Egyptian soil, or beside the tumulus on the plain of Marathon, nearly resemble the stones which tip the reed arrow of the modern Samoyed. Perhaps only a skilled experience could discern, in a heap of such arrow-heads, ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... anticipated and planned for it. He had no boards with which to make a coffin, but there was plenty of stout canvas, and in a double thickness of this he sewed the body of his friend. Before doing so he dug away the snow beside a cairn of rocks that marked the last resting place of her who had gone before, and placed the electric heater, with extended wire connections, on the ground thus exposed. Within a few hours this soil became sufficiently thawed to permit him to dig ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... undertook a journey to the south coast of King William Land, whence the mainland of North America could be descried in clear weather. At their turning-point they deposited in a cairn a narrative of the most important events that had happened on board up to date. This small document was found many years after. The little party returned with good news and bright hopes, but found sorrow on the ships. Admiral Franklin lay on his deathbed. The suspense had ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... the reason of its preservation, he pointed with pardonable pride to a pile of stones which the workmen had there raised to commemorate the event. While nearly all the other marks of the work during its progress had been obliterated, that cairn had been left standing in commemoration of the caution and foresight of ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... 'original author,' from whose capacious brain that work first emanated. Whereas, in truth, Dr. Johnson had been preceded by scores of workers, each of whom had added his stone or stones to the lexicographic cairn, which had already risen to goodly proportions when Johnson made to it his own ...
— The evolution of English lexicography • James Augustus Henry Murray
... pile, clawing the wall to keep my balance. My fingers were still many inches from the coping. I jumped down and gave another ten minutes to the back-breaking work of carrying more boulders from the water to the wall. Then I widened my cairn below, so that I could stand firmly before springing upon the pinnacle with which I completed it. I knew well that this would collapse under me if I allowed my weight to rest more than an instant upon it. And so at last it did; but my fingers had clutched the coping ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... brought again to light, and excite as much marvel and inquiry as any mysterious building of old, the purpose of which we do not understand, and the use of which we cannot now account for. They will be seemingly as meaningless as any lonely cairn, isolated broken piece of wall, or solitary fragment of a building, of which no principal part remains, and which puzzles us to account for at ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... young lady in his general's uniform; she herself in purple velvet, with diamonds and pearls, and a crown of flowers; the corsage of her gown entirely covered with little bows of ribbon of divers colours, which her friends had given her, each adding one, like stones thrown on a cairn in memory of the departed. She had also short sleeves and ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... than its neighbour, has no dustman apparently, and is left with the tin on its hands. It can either bury it in its garden—if it has a garden—take it out for a walk wrapped in paper and drop it quietly in a ditch, if possible in the Braintree area, or build a cairn with it and its predecessors and successors in honour of the Local Government Board (President L5,000, Parliamentary Secretary L1,500, Permanent Secretary L2,000, Legal Adviser L1,000 upward, a total administrative expenditure of over L300,000 ...). In death Bocking and Braintree are ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... the time of his death in what is now a frontier district of Nepal. Three years before that event they were driven from their old capital Kapilavastu; but they formed a new one fifteen miles further south, just beyond the present frontier of Nepal, and there they erected a stupa or massive stone cairn, to guard the portion of the ashes of the Buddha which was committed to ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... This cairn the Constitooshun roun' ez Jeff doos in his hat Is hendier a dreffle sight, an' comes more kin' o' pat. I tell ye wut, my jedgment is you're pooty sure to fail, Ez long 'z the head keeps turnin' back for counsel to the tail: Th' advantiges ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... a question of scouting along the land in the search," said the captain, "but of being here, for it must be a matter of accident our finding them. We shall of course build up a cairn wherever we touch, with a paper in it telling when we landed and the direction we take, in case they come here after we ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... Leezie was, As canty as a kittlin; But, och! that night, amang the shaws, She got a fearfu' settlin'! She thro' the whins, an' by the cairn, An' owre the hill gaed scrievin, Whare three lairds' lands met at a burn,[41] To dip her left sark-sleeve in, Was ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... sun looks on the field, nor by the rock nor stream is he! He shuns the race of Bolga, who dwell in his father's hall." Let him march then to Ferad-Artho's hiding place, across the intervening valley—taking leisurely note, as he goes, of every monolith or cairn on his track; and either up the face of the hill, or through the pass on his right, where the high road now runs, and so on to the hamlet of Maghgerabane; above which, on the Skerry—a gloomy, low-browed, basaltic ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 2, December 1875 • Various
... eye would light on the grim black pile of L'Etat, lying out there in the silvery shimmer like some great monumental cairn, a rough and rugged heap of loneliness and mystery—the grimmer and lonelier by reason of the twinkling brightness of its setting. And then his thoughts would play about the lonely pile, and come back with a sense of homely relief to ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... thoughts, he was not insensible to the innate loveliness of such a landscape neither, but felt a portion of that soothing of the spirit which is a common attendant of a scene so thoroughly pervaded by the holy cairn of nature. ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... to hate him now: if he hated me, it was but for a little while, and he knew naught of me. So let his bones be covered up from the wolf and the kite. Yet shall they not lie alongside of her. I will raise a cairn above him here on this fair little plain which he spoilt of all joy." Therewith he fell to, and straightened his body, and laid his huge limbs together and closed his eyes and folded his arms over his breast; and then he piled the stones above him, and went on casting ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... his shirt and other memorials at the foot of the Pole, built a cairn upon it, and shook cayenne pepper on top of all to keep bears away—but it is useless to ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... We ask that you will grant us earth hereby Of Gunnar's earth, for two men dead to-night To lie beneath a cairn that ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... in a handsome uniform— A scarlet coat, black facings, a long plume, Waving, like sails new shivered in a storm, Over a cocked hat in a crowded room, And brilliant breeches, bright as a Cairn Gorme, Of yellow casimire we may presume, White stockings drawn uncurdled as new milk O'er limbs whose symmetry ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... had a fine prospect of the sea, with Leith and Portobello in the distance, and of a fertile plain at the foot of the hill. In the course of our drive our cabman pointed out Dumbiedikes' house; also the cottage of Jeanie Deans,—at least, the spot where it formerly stood; and Muschat's Cairn, of which a small heap of stones is yet remaining. Near this latter object are the ruins of St. Anthony's Chapel, a roofless gable, and other remains, standing on the abrupt hillside. We drove homeward past a parade-ground on which a body of cavalry was exercising, and we met a company of infantry ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was not peculiar to Hawaiian poetry. The Roman Senate bestowed divinity on its emperors by vote; the Hawaiian bard laureate, careering on his Pegasus, thought to accomplish the same end by piling Ossa on Pelion with high-flown phrases; and every loyal subject added his contribution to the cairn that grew heavenward. ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... wife-beater that has ever fallen under my notice, the criminal was somewhat excused by the circumstances of his story. He is a little, very alert, well-bred, intelligent Skye, as black as a hat, with a wet bramble for a nose and two cairn-gorms[14] for eyes. To the human observer, he is decidedly well-looking; but to the ladies of his race he seems abhorrent. A thorough elaborate gentleman, of the plume and sword-knot order, he was born with the nice sense of gallantry to women. He took at their hands ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Lieutenant Hobson, Captain Young, and McClintock himself. In Boothia several relics were discovered, such as would be dropped or left behind by men too weak to carry the usual belongings of a boat or sledge. At Point Victory a cairn, or heap of stones, was discovered by Lieutenant Hobson, with a paper, inclosed in a tin case, which too clearly told its sad story. After a memorandum of progress up to May 28, 1847, "All well," it was added on the same paper: "April 25, 1848. H.M. ships Terror and Erebus were ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... be wanting, and that, in order to suit the spirit of our age, it should lack something which was part and parcel of popular belief in the age to which it belonged. To a thoughtful mind, therefore, such stories as that of Swan's witchcraft, Gunnar's song in his cairn, the Wolf's ride before the Burning, Flosi's dream, the signs and tokens before Brian's battle, and even Njal's weird foresight, on which the whole story hangs, will be regarded as proofs rather for ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... L.I., N.Y. Educated at St. Mary's Parochial School, Norwalk, Conn. Author of "My Ireland", privately printed, 1917 (taken over by Henry Holt & Co. and republished in the following year), "The Cairn of Stars", 1920. Mr. Carlin takes his pen-name from that of his grandfather who was a cottage weaver of linen and a ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... compartments of which were strapped down carefully. Under a cairn exterior he concealed a throbbing heart, for in that valise was the Doctor's pistol, upon which he relied in anticipation of future dangers. The officials opened the valise. It was apparently a puzzle to them. They found but little clothing. On the contrary, a very extensive assortment ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... shipping companies are, as a result of the ceaseless rise in freights, disclosed in the reports of two Newcastle lines published yesterday. The high cost of freights is largely responsible for the dearness of food, coal, and other necessities of life. The gross profits of the Cairn Line of Steamships, Ltd., amounted to L292,108, and the net profits, after deducting the special war taxation and other items, were L162,689. A dividend of 10 per cent, with bonus of 4s. per share, is recommended. This makes a total of 30 per cent, free of income tax, as against 10 per ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... thing, how Unn had upheld her dignity to the day of her death. So they now drank together Olaf's wedding and Unn's funeral honours, and the last day of the feast Unn was carried to the howe (burial mound) that was made for her. She was laid in a ship in the cairn, and much treasure with her, and after that the cairn was closed up. Then Olaf "Feilan" took over the household of Hvamm and all charge of the wealth there, by the advice of his kinsmen who were there. When the feast came to an end Olaf gave lordly gifts to the men most held in ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... an intruder. An elderly tinker, the father of the bride, grey as a leafless thorn in winter, but still stalwart and strong, sat admiring a bit of spelter of about a pound weight. It was gold, he said, or, as he pronounced the word, "guild," which had been found in an old cairn, and was of immense value, "for it was peer guild and that was the best o' guild;" but if I pleased, he would sell it to me, a very great bargain. I was engaged with some difficulty in declining the offer, when we were interrupted ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... Roderick, for the word! It nerves my heart, it steels my sword; For I have sworn this braid to stain In the best blood that warms thy vein. Now, truce, farewell! and, ruth, begone!— Yet think not that by thee alone, Proud Chief! can courtesy be shown; Though not from copse, or heath, or cairn, Start at my whistle clansmen stern, Of this small horn one feeble blast Would fearful odds against thee cast. But fear not—doubt not—which thou wilt— We try this quarrel hilt to hilt."— Then each at once his ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... extreme point at the west of the bay, the travelers perceived a sort of monument that crowned a height, and naturally pressed forward to visit it. They saw, as they approached, that it was a sort of "cairn," or mass of stones supporting a wooden column made out of a post. This column bore two inscriptions; the ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... pines, which, by the growth of centuries, though mossy with age, had barely reached three feet in altitude. Next, they came to masses and fragments of naked rock heaped confusedly together, like a cairn reared by giants in memory of a giant chief. In this bleak realm of upper air nothing breathed, nothing grew; there was no life but what was concentrated in their two hearts; they had climbed so high ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... apex of the great crag. Wendot knew that he had not much farther to go. He was able to distinguish the cairn of stones which he and his brothers had once erected on the top in honour of their having made the ascent in a marvellously short space of time. Wendot had beaten that record today, he knew; but his eyes were full of anxiety ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the wind was high and the cold severe, and gasping horses, and men prostrate on their faces unable to move, suggested a considerable amount of suffering; but all safely reached the summit, 17,930 feet, where in a snowstorm the guides huzzaed, praised their gods, and tucked rag streamers into a cairn. ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... DeLong, an American, whose ship was crushed in the ice near this island, was its first discoverer. He claimed it in the name of his country and christened it Bennett Island. It says that in the message he left in his cairn. But that don't feed us. I'm starved. There's driftwood on ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... houlets nightly cry. By this time he was 'cross the foord, Whare in the snow the chapman smoored, {149b} And past the birks and meikle stane Whare drunken Charlie brak's neck-bane: And through the whins, and by the cairn Whare hunters fand the murdered bairn; And near the thorn, aboon the well, Where Mungo's mither hanged hersel'. Before him Doon pours a' his floods; The doubling storm roars through the woods; The lightnings flash frae pole to pole; Near and more near the thunders roll; When ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... cairn whence she and Courtier had looked down at the herds of ponies. It was the merest memory now, vague and a little sweet, like the remembrance of some exceptional Spring day, when trees seem to flower before your eyes, and in sheer wantonness exhale a scent of lemons. The ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... but like the coral insect we build islands which become continents: like the bee we store sustenance for future communities. The individual perishes; but the race is immortal. The acorn of today is the oak of the next millennium. I throw my stone on the cairn and die; but later comers add another stone and yet another; and lo! a ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... day at about noon they awoke, and had a bath in the warm pool. They saw the armoured mass of the great ant evidently undisturbed, while the bodies of its victims were already shining skeletons, and raised a small cairn of stones in memory of the struggle they had had there. "We should name this place Kentucky," said Bearwarden, "for it is indeed a dark and bloody ground," and, seeing the aptness of the appellation, they entered it so on their charts. While Ayrault got the batteries in ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... on the cliffs of Pleinmont, where a cairn long marked her resting-place. Tita was taken to the Vale; all attempts to restore her from the shock which her nerves had received failed till on one sunny morning Hilda's infant was placed on her knees: when the child crowed, and smiled at her, the cloud imperceptibly ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... A cairn was erected by us; a record and some letters deposited for the natives to put on board whalers at a future season; and having placed a number of presents for the poor creatures in the different huts, and on the caches, we hurried on board and made ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... might be expected, considering that it was finished in a hurry, long after the author had given up poetry as a main occupation. But the half burlesque Spenserians of the overture are very good; the contrasted songs, 'Dweller of the Cairn' and 'A Danish Maid for Me,' are happy. Harold's interview with the Chapter is a famous bit of bravura; and all concerning the Castle of the Seven Shields, from the ballad introducing it, through ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury |
