OS1/34/22/17

Continued entries/extra info

[page] 17

[Earl Cairnie continued from page 16]
and there is no scope for Danish works of the magnitude of this either here or on any other
portion of the mainland of Scotland. If it were erected indeed as must therefore be supposed
in communication of a native victory over the Dane why then the lofty cairn might swell for ages through
the pride of tradition, and generation after generation as they passed it might bring from the most
distant pilgrimages a stone to pile upon Earl Cairnie. So let it be. The hollow whispering trees that
bend over it, crumbling in all the decrepitude of age and the very lichens and mosses that conceal
its stones seem to reserve from us a tale which history has forgotten to tell or which is only recorded
in those perplexing hieroglyphics which linguists can never interpret.