318 ARRAN. ANTIQUITIES. 



systems of defence, and of their funereal usages, as 

 indicated by the permanent monuments which they 

 have left, lend a valuable light in assisting us to 

 trace their original identity ; as, in a more advanced 

 stage of refinement, that may be deduced from the 

 peculiar characters by which their ideas in the arts 

 are marked. By this help the antiquary penetrates the 

 obscurity of past ages, and dispels the gloom that 

 hangs over times of which even the traditions have 

 vanished in the revolution of years. Rude sepulchral 

 pillars, urns, stone chests, cairns, dunes, circles, and 

 cromlechs, thus mark the common origin of the Celtic 

 tribes which peopled Gaul and South Britain, and 

 occupied even the remotest of the Scottish isles. Arran 

 contains examples of all these monuments ; and here, 

 as in other parts of Scotland where they abound, their 

 permanence may in some measure be attributed to the 

 rude and uncultivated state of the ground where they 

 are situated ; neither the course of the plough nor the 

 wants of architecture having yet presented causes or 

 motives for their obliteration or removal. But their 

 preservation in Scotland must be partly attributed to 

 more interesting circumstances ; to the respect which 

 the inhabitants entertain for sepulchral monuments, and to 

 the superstitious feelings, not yet quite extinct, from 

 which they deprecate the removal or disturbance of 

 the ashes of the dead. If it is no longer a rule for 

 the passing traveller or solitary shepherd, to add a 

 stone to the monumental cairn, still the hoary pile 

 remains with all its ancient moss unviolated ; a frail 

 structure, yet often more permanent than the loftier 

 mausolea of recent times. 



A considerable number of erect monumental stones 

 exists in various parts of the island ; one of which, 

 by the road side at Brodick, and two equally remark- 

 able in a field not far distant, are particularly conspi- 

 cuous for their magnitude and position. These stones, 



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