BARROWS, in ancient topography, artificial hillocks or mounds, intended as repositories for the dead, and formed either of stones heaped up, or of earth. The former, more generally known by the name of cairns, are almost exclusively confined to Scotland. Of the latter, Dr Plott takes notice of two sorts in Oxfordshire; one placed on the military ways, the other in the fields, meadows, or woods; the first sort being probably of Roman origin, the other erected by the Britons or Danes. Monuments of this kind are also very frequent in Scotland. On digging into the barrows, urns made of calcined earth, and containing burnt bones and ashes, have been found in some of them; in others, stone chests, containing bones entire; in others, again, bones neither lodged in chests nor deposited in urns. These tumuli are round, not greatly elevated, and generally at their bases surrounded by a fosse. They are of different sizes, being in proportion, it is supposed, to the rank and power of the deceased person. ’ f those found in the Orkneys, some are formed of earth alone, whilst others consist of stone covered with earth. In one of the former was discovered a coffin, made of six flat stones, but too short to receive a body at full length; and this is the general characteristic of all these sarcophagi: hence the skeletons found in them lie with the knees pressed to the breast, and the legs doubled along the thighs. In one of them were found’ multitudes of small beetles; and as similar insects have been*discovered in the bag which inclosed the sacred ibis among the Egyptians, we may suppose that the nation to whom these tumuli belonged had the same superstition respecting them as the subjects of the Pharaohs. Ancient Greece and Latium concurred with the natives of this island in the erection of funerary tumuli. Patroclus among the Greeks, and Hector among the Trojans, received the same funeral honours with our Caledonian heroes; and the ashes of Dercennus the Laurentine monarch could boast of no prouder receptacle. The urn and pall of the Trojan warrior might perhaps be more superb than those of a British leader; but the monument of each was composed of the same materials, dug from the bosom of our mother earth. The Grecian barrows, however, do not seem to have been all equally simple. The barrow of Alyattes, father of Croesus king of Lydia, is described by Herodotus as a most superb monument, inferior only to the works of the Egyptians and Babylonians. It was a vast mound of earth, heaped on a basement of large stones, by three classes of the people, one of which was composed of girls devoted to prostitution. Alyattes died in the year B. c. 562; but Herodotus informs us, that, in his time, above a century afterwards, five stones, or steloe, on which letters were engraved, remained on the top, recording what each class had performed; and from the measurement it appeared that the greater portion of the work had been done by the girls. It was customary among the Greeks to place on barrows the image of some animal, or stelae, round pillars, with inscriptions. The famous barrow of the Athenians in the plain of Marathon, described by Pausanias, is an instance of the latter usage. An ancient monument in Italy near the Appian Way, vulgarly called the sepulchre of the Curiatii, has the same number of termini as the barrow of. Alyattes; the basement, which is square, supporting five round pyramids.

Barrows, and similar tumuli, are also found in great numbers in America. These are of different sizes; some of them being constructed of earth, and others of loose stones. That they were repositories of the dead has been generally believed; but on what particular occasions they were constructed, is matter of conjecture. Some have thought [7:4:410]that they covered the bones of those who had fallen in battle on the spot; others ascribe them to the custom said to prevail among the Indians, of collecting at certain periods the bones of all their dead, wheresoever deposited at the time of death; whilst others, again, suppose them the general sepulchre for towns conjectured to have existed on or near the spots where they are met with. For a minute and interesting account of one of these remarkable tumuli, the reader may consult Mr Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia·, p. 156.