In Celtic lands it is possible to encounter standing stones in many odd places, near motorways, in car parks, or thrusting up like solitary watchmen in hayfields or family farms. Stone Age and Bronze Age farmers left remnants behind in hut circles, burial cairns, monoliths and stone circles, and succeeding generations of settlers and invaders merely worked and fought around them (after, of course, removing any useful treasure from the underground tombs), leaving them to the ravages of nature rather than impose their own architecture on the sites.
Scotland is particularly abundant in upright stones, and Machrie Moor, on the isle of Arran, has one of the most impressive collections of monoliths and circles in the entire country. Six Bronze Age stone circles, estimated to be nearly 4,000 years old, can be found here, just shy of a mile off the main coastal road, comprising the most significant archaeological site on Arran. Made of red sandstone or granite, they occupy several fields, no longer cultivated, and are easily discovered by following a well-worn footpath. From this vantage, the divide of Machrie Glen into two steeply pitched valleys is obvious in the northeast, and on the summer solstice, the sun splits the gap and beams its light through the notch into this flattened moorland, which may explain why the circles were placed here. It’s also probably no coincidence that the Bronze Age engineers located them in an area to offer the widest possible visibility to visitors entering the valley from any direction.
The track winds in a southeasterly direction across boggy plains, overrun with heather and sphagnum moss, making a dogleg before reaching the first series of monuments, the Moss Farm Road Stone Circle. (The name refers to a derelict farm.) The walk then climbs a bit, revealing scattered burial mounds and stones, before ending at the larger collection of monuments, identified by a Historic Scotland interpretation board.
Many of the stones are popular in local folklore. One prominent flat-topped stone is known as Suidh Coire Fhionn in Gaelic, or “Fingal’s Cauldron Seat,” an example of how the landscape remains linked to Celtic folklore.
Two of the circles stand on the sites of previous Neolithic timber circles, which were built half-a-millennium before the stone structures. But, of course, wood doesn’t last as long as stone, just as flesh doesn’t last as long as wood, and the thought that people lived for thousands of years before these very stones – standing now for 40 centuries – altered their forms to suit their revised function is impossible to ignore on this windswept moor where sheep still graze and buzzards and golden eagles soar overhead, hunting for carrion.
Some here believe that the stones speak in whispers. They are keepers of lost stories in a world where languages die and tongues are suddenly silenced. To the Bronze Age farmer, they were sacred places, serving as cemetery and calendar and compass. To today’s wandering traveler, just passing through a bumpy timeline marked by sundials, sand through the hourglass, Rolex watches or the beeping digital iPhone, they remain a source of wonder and enchantment. The stones aren’t timeless, but they are the closest things to such a concept that we encounter in this world. They endure, positioned in their isolated poses amid bleak but beautiful surroundings, painted by wild rains, howling sea winds, dancing mists, shape-shifting clouds, ghostly moons, golden suns, mischievous rainbows and stars that pierce and probe like the eyes of ancient gods. They keep our flesh-and-blood transience alive and connected to Earth time, the only place we know as the selves that we think we know.
Clams Got Legs 