“I will bring a stone to your cairn,” - a Scottish blessing.
A CAIRN is a gathering of rocks and stones, often done by primitive people, to commemorate an event, a battle, a burial, or ritual. Cairns date the to Bronze Age. Probably the most famous cairn is Stonehenge.
Cairns take many forms and 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. Cairns along hiking trails are often maintained by groups of hikers adding a stone when they pass.
The word cairn derives from the Scottish Gaelic (and Irish) cairn which has a much broader meaning, and can refer to various types of hills and natural stone piles. Cairns can be found all over the world in alpine or mountainous regions, and also in barren desert and tundra areas as well as on coasts. Below are examples.
Here at the Retreat Center of the Spiritual Growth Network of Kentucky and close to the Amazing Grace Wedding Chapel, we have chosen a space in the Labyrinth for a Cairn dedicated to the memory of John A. McGill. At the dedication in the fall of 2007, John’s friends were invited to bring stones for his cairn.
In some regions, piles of rocks used to mark hiking trails are called "ducks" or "duckies". These are typically smaller cairns, so named because some would have a "beak" pointing in the direction of the route. An expression "two rocks do not make a duck" reminds hikers that just one rock resting upon another could be the result of accident or nature rather than intentional trail marking
In Greek mythology, cairns were associated with Hermes, the god of overland travel. According to one legend, Hermes was put on trial by Hera for slaying her favorite servant, the monster Argus. All of the other gods acted as a jury, and as a way of declaring their verdict they were given pebbles, and told to throw them at whichever person they deemed to be in the right, Hermes or Hera. Hermes argued so skillfully that he ended up buried under a heap of pebbles, and this was the first cairn. --Reference: Wikipedia and other Net sources.
© Paschal Baute, 2007
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