Fig. 257.—Ground plan and section of Earth-house at Eriboll, Sutherlandshire.
(From a Plan by Dr. Arthur Mitchell.)
An Earth-house at Eriboll, in Sutherlandshire[[112]] (Fig. [257]), resembles that at Clova in presenting so little curvature as to be almost straight. The curvature which it has is to the left, and only extends for a few feet within the entrance. It is said, however, to have been 10 or 12 feet longer than it was when examined in 1865. It was then 33 feet in length. It is peculiar for the smallness of its size, being nowhere more than 4½ feet in height, and for the greater part of its length only 2 feet wide, expanding to 3½ for about 3 feet only from the inner end. In view of this feature of its character, Dr Mitchell remarks that it is exceedingly difficult to see what purpose such a structure could have served; but he adds that it is worthy of note that in this district similar underground constructions are not rare, and that they are called by a Gaelic name which signifies Hiding-beds. The use of such underground places of concealment is referred to in the Saga of Gisli the Soursop, which relates to events occurring between the years 930 and 980, and was written in Iceland about the beginning of the twelfth century. It states that when Gisli was outlawed and every man’s hand was against him, he went to Thorgerda in Vadil “She was often wont to harbour outlaws, and she had an underground room. One end of it opened on the river-bank and the other below her hall.” Again it states that “Gisli was always in his earth-house when strangers came to the isle.”[[113]] The form of Earth-house thus described as then in use for concealment in Iceland is not the form of the Earth-houses found in Scotland, which have rarely two openings, but the passage is interesting because it shows that the traditional use ascribed to the Scottish examples is a use which was practised among a people who had close relations with the district in which the tradition still remains attached to these structures.
But whatever may have been the actual purpose or purposes to which they were applied, the fact which is of importance in our investigation is that these Earth-houses, though ranging in area from Berwickshire to the north coast of Sutherland, are all of one special character, long, low, narrow galleries, always possessing a certain amount of curvature, sometimes greatly, and at other times doubly curved, always widening and increasing in height from the low and narrow entrance inwards, usually built with convergent walls and roofed with heavy lintels, which are always lower than the surrounding level of the ground, so that the whole structure is subterranean. Occasionally they present variations in structure as in the case of one at Murroes, in Forfarshire, which, instead of being built, has its walls constructed entirely of flagstones set on edge. Similarly, the example at Kinord, in Aberdeenshire (Fig. [258]), has its walls constructed of single boulders set on edge or on end, and it presents the further peculiarity of the chamber being divided into two branches at the farther end. One at Pirnie, in the parish of Wemyss, in Fife, and another at Elie, had steps leading down to the entrance.
Fig. 258.—Ground plan and sections of Earth-house at Kinord, Aberdeenshire.
Occasionally they occur in considerable groups, as at Airlie, in Forfarshire, where there is a group of five. One of these is of great size, its length being 67 feet, and its average breadth, from the farther end to within about 12 feet of the entrance, 7½ feet. The height at the entrance is only about 22 inches, and the floor slopes down for about 20 feet till a height of about 6 feet is obtained. The walls are built of rough undressed boulders laid in pretty regular courses, and they converge from a width on the floor of a little over 7 feet to about 4 feet at the roof. The covering stones are of great size, many of them 7 or 8 feet in length and 4 feet wide. It contained the usual traces of cookery in the accumulation of ashes and bones of animals upon the floor. The only other relics found in it were a brass pin, a stone mortar-like vessel, and fragments of querns. The other four examples in the same neighbourhood are known to have existed, but have neither been measured nor described.
A still more remarkable group was brought under the notice of the Society in 1816 by Professor Stuart of Aberdeen. They are spread over a space of a mile or two in diameter on what was then a dry moor in the parishes of Auchindoir and Kildrummy, in Aberdeenshire. These excavated houses, he says, are most frequently discovered by the plough striking against some of the large stones which form the roof. The only opening to them appears to have been between two large stones placed in a sloping direction at one end, and about 18 inches asunder. Through this narrow opening one must slide down to the depth of 5 or 6 feet, when he comes to a vault generally about 6 feet high, upwards of 30 feet long, and 8 or 9 feet wide. The floor is smooth, as if of clay, and the sides are built of rude undressed stones without cement. The walls bend inwards to form a rude arch, and the roof is covered with large stones 5 or 6 feet long, some of them being over a ton in weight. The whole structure is beneath the level of the ground and quite invisible, but many of them were detected by the existence close to them of a square space about 10 to 15 paces each way dug a foot or two deep with the earth thrown outwards. These he conjectures to have been the sites of the summer huts of the people, who retreated to these underground places in winter, and stored their provisions and concealed their valuables in them all the year round. But he adds that no article of furniture, and no utensils or instruments either of stone or metal have been found in them so far as can be learned, but only a quantity of wood-ashes and charcoal, chiefly at the farther end, where there sometimes appears a small aperture at the top as an outlet for the smoke. The whole number discovered in this locality he estimates at between forty and fifty. They are found, he says, in other localities, but so great a number collected in one place has probably never before occurred. The number is certainly very large, and may probably be over estimated, but it would not be difficult to find in other parts of Scotland, and specially in Aberdeenshire, a series of groups of similar structures which, though not so numerous or so closely aggregated, are so distributed over wide districts as to show that the custom of constructing these underground edifices was general and prevalent. Wherever they occur they present the same individuality of character and the same strongly marked typical features. Their range in area extends from Berwickshire to Shetland. They occur in greater or less abundance in most of the counties bordering on the east coast. A few doubtful examples only are recorded in those bordering on the west coast. But it is only of late years that the importance of securing a permanent and exhaustive record of such casual discoveries has begun to be recognised, and in this direction of defining the areas of the respective types of structural antiquities, we are still groping in darkness on the threshold of a great investigation.
Fig. 259.—Ground plan of Earth-house at Cairn Conan, near Arbroath, Forfarshire. (From a Plan by Andrew Jervise.)]