The Cruachna, or Cruithne, are the older Pictish or Celtic race particularly referred to hereafter. They are numbered among the Pagans in the same poetic description of the great regal cemetery of Ireland,-- "The three cemeteries of idolaters are The cemetery of Tailten, the select; The cemetery of the ever-fair Cruachan, And the cemetery of Brugh." Of all the more remarkable Scottish sepulchral memorials, the Cairn is most frequently found, scattered through many districts, and corresponding in form to nearly every class of the earthen tumuli. So common, indeed, are cairns in many parts of the country, that they give names to the farms on which they stand, the prefix or termination, cairn, being of very frequent occurrence in such designations of property, particularly in Aberdeenshire. The cairn appears to have been completely incorporated with the ideas of the people, from the remotest period of the rude stone implements, to the close of Pagan customs and sepulchral rites, and is justly described as a Celtic monument. Its name, _kærn_, is a primitive term, literally signifying heaps of stones.[67] Dr. Jamieson traces it back to the Hebrew _kern_, a horn, also applied to a hill. In the agreement between Jacob and Laban, we see an example of the standing stone and cairn, the "pillar and heap," employed as the memorials of a covenant by the Hebrew patriarch. In the sepulture of Achan and of Absalom we have examples of the cairn as a mark of obloquy and contempt; but no traces of such associations are discoverable in Scotland, unless in very recent times. Occasionally we meet with examples of the pillar and heap united in a memorial cairn, as in one of large dimensions, situated at the junction of two roads, near the village of Fowlis, Perthshire, which is surmounted by a large standing stone, corresponding to the barrows, for which the distinctive appellation of crowned tumuli is suggested. The estimation of the cairn as an honourable memorial of the dead, is proved not only by the valuable contents, more frequently discovered in cairns than in any other Scottish sepulchral mounds, but also by the associations which popular tradition has preserved. A proverbial expression, still in use among the Scottish Highlanders, is _Curri mi clach er do cuirn_, I will add a stone to your cairn: _i.e._, I will honour your memory when you are gone. The conical cairn must have been in use in Scotland during a longer period than any other sepulchral memorial. It undoubtedly belongs to the Stone Period, during which it was frequently constructed of proportions no less gigantic than in later eras, and much greater than any contemporary earthen tumulus. But it appears to have been the favourite and most distinguished sepulchral memorial of the aboriginal races, throughout the whole three periods into which archæologists divide the long era prior to the revolutions effected by Roman civilisation and the introduction of Christianity.