208 ANCIENT REMAINS IN ARRAN. 



parish, sometimes connected with cairns and sometimes not. 

 At Largie-beg, near Dippen, on a narrow plain near the sea, 

 several cairns lately opened contained rude urns of unbaked 

 clay, containing ashes." These cairns on the shore have, how- 

 ever, most probably a different history, having been raised 

 over the dead given up by the sea. "An urn containing human 

 bones," the writer continues, "turned up last year at the 

 manse [of Kilbride]; and at S. Kiscadale, near Whiting 

 Bay, there was found a few years ago an urn containing a 

 piece of gold in the form of a drawer-handle, with some iron 

 or steel much corroded at each end. The man concealed his 

 prize, and took the earliest opportunity of disposing of it to 

 a jeweller in Glasgow, who melted it down into rings and 

 brooches." Pennant describes the Dun-fion pitchstone, but 

 takes no notice of the wall of the supposed fort on its 

 summit, or of any sign of vitrification ; there seems then no 

 foundation for this but the conjecture of Headrick already 

 alluded to (Art. 41). "In the course of my ride," says Pen- 

 nant, " on the other side of the hill of Dun-fion, facing the 

 bay of Lamlash, I saw on the road-side a cairn of a different 

 kind to what I had seen before; it was large, of an oblong 

 form, and composed like the others of round stones; but 

 along the top was a series of cells, some entire, but many 

 fallen in ; each was covered with a huge flat stone of great 

 size resting on others upright, that served as supports; but 

 I could not count them by reason of the lapse of the lesser 

 stones. . . . These cells are called in Wales Cromlih, 

 and Cest-va-en or chests." This cairn and cromlech seem no 

 longer to exist ; the stone circle at the summit level of the 

 road, and mentioned by us farther on, can hardly be indicated, 

 and no notice is taken in the Statistical Account of any such 

 monument in this neighbourhood. Doubtless it has shared 

 the fate which has overtaken so many of the ancient remains 

 both here, in Bute, and indeed over the whole country. 



99. The most striking of the monuments which remain, and 

 the best preserved of the kind in Scotland, except those in 



