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Field Visit
Date June 1979
Event ID 1121897
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1121897
Cairns, Port an Fhir-bhréige, Iona (NM 262 219)
There are at least fifty cairns situated on the raised beach immediately N of Port an Fhir-bhréige. The majority of the cairns, which are composed of pebbles gathered from the raised beach, measure between 1m and 3m in diameter by 0.2m to 0.5m in height. Two, however, are considerably larger, measuring about 6m in diameter by 1.6m in height and surrounded by ditches 1m broad and 0.3m deep.
There is no reason to believe that these cairns are of prehistoric date, and in view of their situation on the pebble beach an agrarian origin also seems improbable. From the 18th century onwards they were noted by tourists who visited Columba's reputed landing-place at Port na Curaich, the adjacent bay to the E. Several visitors recorded the tradition that the cairns had been built as a penitential task imposed on pilgrims or monks, and Pennant added that, if the mounds were proportionate to their crimes, ‘it is no breach of charity to think them enormous sinners’ (1). They may indeed have been constructed as a devotional act by pilgrims, presumably during the medieval period.
RCAHMS 1982, visited June 1979.
(1) Pococke, Tours, 87; Irish Tourist, Iona, 17; Pennant, Tour (1772), I, 298, Garnett, Tour, 266.
