Field Visit
Date July 1985
Event ID 1156624
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1156624
Dwarfie Stane HY 2433 0041 HY20SW 8
This was the monument most frequently mentioned by early travellers in Orkney, beginning with Jo Ben in the sixteenth century; it was most successfully popularised by Sir Walter Scott in 'The Pirate', Johnston's paper is a good source for early references. The Stone, a natural sandstone block at the foot of the hamars S of the Rackwick road, is Britain's sole example of a rock-cut Neolithic tomb. An entrance in the S face opens into a short passage giving access to two small chambers. A stone lying immediately outside the doorway is the right size and shape to have originally closed the passage; a hole made at some time in the passage roof has recently been made good by SDD.
Most writers retail versions of folklore relating to the Stone; a particularly detailed account, of uncertain provenance, appears in Chambers Journal for 1864. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century graffiti are a notable feature, prominent being those by Major William Mounsey, a former British spy in Afghanistan and Persia; his name with the date 1850 appears on the south face, above a line of beautiful Persian calligraphy which reads 'I have sat two nights and so learnt patience' - in reference to Mounsey's experience of the Hoy midges when he camped at the Stone. The translation has kindly been provided by Or G R Sabri-Tabrizi, Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Edinburgh.
30m ESE of the Stone is another big boulder which seems to have been intended as a closing stone; it measures 1.55m by 1.05m by 0.8m and is shaped at one end into a 'stopper' form more neatly than the shaping of the closing stone now in front of the doorway. In a line downslope N by W from the tomb, at 11 m, 17m and 19m from it, are massive edge-set boulders. The positioning of these may be fortuitous, but they could conceivably be remmants of an alignment running up to the Stone.
RCAHMS 1989, visited July 1985.
(‘Jo Ben' in Barry 1805, 445-6; Wallace 1700, 51-2; Martin 1716, 364; Scott 1822, ii, 133-6; anon. 1864; Johnston 1896; Calder and Macdonald 1936; RCAHMS 1946, ii, pp. 110-12, No.385; Henshall 1963, 87, 196-7; OR 1923).
