Also 6–8 carne, 8 cairne, kairn, 8–9 carn. [mod.Sc. form (cf. bairn, wairn, airm, etc.) of earlier carn, a. Gaelic carn masc. ‘heap of stones.’ Found in Lowland Sc. early in 16th c., and thence recently in Eng., as a term of prehistoric archæology, and more widely and popularly in connection with the piles of stones used or raised by Ordnance Surveyors. The direct Eng. representative of the Celtic would be carn, which is common on the Ordnance maps of Wales, and in local use with tourists in Wales.
The word is found in all the Celtic langs.; OIrish carn, carnn, carnd occurs as neuter; Welsh, beside carn fem. ‘heap,’ has carn masc. ‘hoof’ and ‘haft of knife,’ etc., indicating an earlier sense ‘horn.’ If these are to be identified, the word must be = the recorded Gaulish karn-on neut. ‘horn’; in which case the primary sense would apparently be ‘cairn on a mountain top’ i.e., the ‘horn’ on its ‘head’; which is quite possible, though not certain. The word enters into the names of various mountains in Scotland and Wales. Welsh has also the collective derivative carnedd, as in Carnedd Llewelyn, etc.]
A pyramid of rough stones, raised for a memorial or mark of some kind: a. as a memorial of some event, or a sepulchral monument over the grave of some person of distinction (cf. Gen. xxxi. 45, 2 Sam. xviii. 17, etc.). Hence, to add a stone to any one’s cairn.
1535. Stewart, Cron. Scot. (1858), I. 87. Towardis the middis of that carne on hicht Ane greit lang stone gart set on end vprycht.
a. 1600. Montgomerie, Flyting, 401. A cairne beside a croce.
1772. Pennant, Voy. Hebrides, 209 (Jam.). As long as the memory of the deceased endured, not a passenger went by without adding a stone to the heap…. To this moment there is a proverbial expression among the highlanders allusive to the old practice; a suppliant will tell his patron, Curri mi cloch er do charne, I will add a stone to your cairn; meaning, when you are no more I will do all possible honor to your memory.
1796. Pegge, Anonym. (1809), 424. They are rather kairns, or piles collected for memorials of the dead.
1805. Scott, Last Minstrel, III. xxix. On many a cairn’s gray pyramid Where urns of mighty chiefs lie hid.
1807. G. Chalmers, Caledonia, I. I. ii. 72, note. A large Carn of stones … about twenty-five feet high.
1878. H. M. Stanley, Dark Cont., I. vi. 137. We … raised a caim of stones over his grave.
b. as a boundary-mark, a landmark on a mountain-top or some prominent point, or an indication to arctic voyagers or travellers of the site of a cache or depôt of provisions.
The local name of a summit-cairn in the south-east of Scotland and north of England previously to the period of the Ordnance Survey was man, as in Coniston Old Man, the High Man and Low Man on Helvellyn, etc.
1770. Wesley, Wks. (1872), III. 398. The Highlands are bounded … by Carns, or heaps of stones laid in a row, south-west and north-east, from sea to sea.
1790. Burns, Elegy Henderson, iii. Ye hills, near neebors o’ the starns That proudly cock your cresting cairns!
1805. J. Graham, Sabbath, 167. On the distant cairns the watcher’s ear Caught doubtfully at times the breeze-borne note.
1835. Sir J. Ross, N.-W. Pass., xli. 546. I … erected a cairn and a flagstaff with the necessary directions.
1862. Stanley, Jew. Ch. (1877), I. iii. 53. The confines … are marked by the rude cairn or pile of stones erected at the boundary of their territories.
1871. 6-in. Ordn. Map Eng. Sheet 78. Bangor, has many instances of ‘carn.’
1872. Jenkinson, Guide Eng. Lakes (1879), 301. The cairn on the summit of Scawfell Pike will now be a distinct object, and easily gained.
1878. Markham, Gt. Frozen Sea, iv. 56. The depôt was placed on the north-easternmost island, and a large cairn was erected on the highest and most prominent point.
c. A mere pile of stones.
1699. Phil. Trans., XXI. 231. Three great Heaps of Stones in this Lake … we call Cairns in the Irish.
1786. Burns, Brigs Ayr, 112. I’ll be a Brig, when ye’re a shapeless cairn.
