Càrn na Marbh (meaning "mound" or "

cairn A cairn is a man-made pile (or stack) of stones raised for a purpose, usually as a marker or as a burial mound. The word ''cairn'' comes from the gd, càrn (plural ). Cairns have been and are used for a broad variety of purposes. In prehis ...

of the dead") is a re-used Bronze Age tumulus, located in

Fortingall Fortingall is a small village in highland Perthshire, Scotland, in Glen Lyon. Its nearest sizable neighbours are Aberfeldy and Kenmore. Its Gaelic name is ''Fartairchill'' (lit. "Escarpment Church"—i.e. "church at the foot of an escarpmen ...

Perthshire Perthshire (locally: ; gd, Siorrachd Pheairt), officially the County of Perth, is a historic county and registration county in central Scotland. Geographically it extends from Strathmore in the east, to the Pass of Drumochter in the north, ...

, Scotland. The mound was used in the 14th century for burying victims of the

plague Plague or The Plague may refer to: Agriculture, fauna, and medicine *Plague (disease), a disease caused by ''Yersinia pestis'' * An epidemic of infectious disease (medical or agricultural) * A pandemic caused by such a disease * A swarm of pes ...

away from the church graveyard. A stone, known as Clach a' Phlàigh, "the Plague Stone" crowns the mound and may be an original

standing stone A menhir (from Brittonic languages: ''maen'' or ''men'', "stone" and ''hir'' or ''hîr'', "long"), standing stone, orthostat, or lith is a large human-made upright rock (geology), stone, typically dating from the European middle Bronze Age. T ...

and commemorates the plague victims who were buried here in the 14th century. A tablet on the stone is inscribed with the words:

''“Here lie the victims of the Great Plague of the 14th Century, taken here on a sledge drawn by a white horse led by an old woman.”''

Local legend says it was the focal point of an ancient Samhain (Halloween) festival. A great fire or ''Samhnag'' was lit on top of it each year. The whole community took hands when it was blazing and danced round the mound both sunwise and anti-sunwise. As the fire began to wane, some of the younger boys took burning embers from the flames and ran throughout the field with them, finally throwing them into the air and dancing over them as they lay glowing on the ground. When the last embers were showing, the boys would have a leaping competition across the remains of the fire, reminiscent of the Beltane festival. When it was finished, the young people went home and ducked for apples and practised divination. There was no

Scottish Scottish usually refers to something of, from, or related to Scotland, including: *Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family native to Scotland *Scottish English *Scottish national identity, the Scottish ide ...

tradition of ' guising', the bonfire being the absolute centre of attention until it was consumed. The Samhain celebrations here apparently came to an end in 1924. The mound of ‘Càrn na Marbh’ is located in the same village as the

Fortingall Yew The Fortingall Yew is an ancient European yew (''Taxus baccata'') in the churchyard of the village of Fortingall in Perthshire, Scotland. Considered one of the oldest trees in Britain, modern estimates place its age at an average of 5,000 years. ...

,"Wanted: Fat, old, gnarled trees"
(28 June 2007) Telegraph.co.uk. Retrieved on 29 September 2007. "The Fortingall Yew near Callendar in Scotland - believed to be the oldest tree in the UK and possibly Europe." and the general area is famed for its Bronze Age burial mounds, and preserved standing stones. The site was Christianised during the Dark Ages, perhaps because it was already a sacred place. Place-name and archaeological evidence hint at an Iron Age cult centre at

which may have had this ancient tree as its focus.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Carn Na Marbh Bronze Age Scotland History of Perth and Kinross Archaeological sites in Perth and Kinross Tumuli in Scotland