The Crying Cairns

Reclaiming Keening

Coffin Road Cairn

Reclaiming Keening is an offering for paid subscribers. While the majority of my posts are accessible to everyone, if you’d like to join this specific series, please consider signing up. In this post I explore the tradition of cairns found on coffin roads.

In Gaelic there is an old blessing, Cuiridh mi clach air do chàrn (I’ll put a stone on your cairn). This is a lovely way of saying; I won’t forget you. In funeral processions, each person in the funeral procession would add a stone to the cairn, in respect for the person who had died.

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