Field Visit
Date May 1974
Event ID 1121876
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1121876
Cairn, Blar Buidhe NM 284 243
Immediately E of the bluff behind Blar Buidhe and 60m W of the St Columba Hotel, there is a cairn measuring 6.9m by 5.8m and 1m in height. Now a grass-covered mound, it formerly had a kerb of large boulders, only two of which, both about 1m high, are in situ; five others have been uprooted and are lying nearby. A plan prepared by Sir Henry Dryden in 1875 (1), which shows a trench running across the centre of the cairn from NW to SE, indicates that some excavations took place over a hundred years ago, but no further details are known. Embedded in the SE quadrant there is a boulder 1m long and 0.3m thick; it does not appear to be part of a cist and as it is not shown on Dryden's plan it may be a relatively recent addition.
Earlier interpretations of the structure include the suggestions that it is a ring-cairn, or a collapsed corn-drying kiln (2); although it may be akin to the class known as kerb-cairns, found for example on Mull (3), the kerb-stones of such cairns are usually contiguous. Without further excavation, therefore, its exact nature cannot be determined.
RCAHMS 1982, visited May 1974.
1. Dryden MS 7. The cairn was at that time known locally as Tigh Fhinn ('Finn's House'). Ancient burial-mounds were often associated with the Irish hero Finn, e.g. Greadal Fhinn, Ardnamurchan (Inventory of Argyll, 3, No. 3), but the name of this cairn may have been suggested by its location in Blar Buidhe ('yellow field'), since the Gaelic tale recounting the adventures of Finn in the house of the Irish giant Blar Buidhe was still current in Argyll in the 19th century (cf. MacDougall, J, Waifs and Strays of Celtic Tradition, 3; Folk and Hero Tales (1891), 56-75).
2. DES (1957), 11 ; DES (1958), 15 ; DES (1959), 11.
3. E.g. Inventory of Argyll, 3, Nos. 10 (1 and 2) and 32; PSAS, 106 (1974-5), 30-3.
