Ossian Collection > Galic antiquities

5 o AHISTORYOF Chap. III.
the Druids after they had burnt the criminals in the manner we
have defcribed; and feems to prove plainly, that Csefar and Tacitus
fpeak of the fame thing ; the victims of the one being the malefac-
tors of the other. To which we may add, that the latter reftricts
the offering of human facrifices to certain days only, which we may
fuppofe to have been the affizes we have fpoken of; and alfo that
the carn i or, as he would imagine it, the Mercurial heap, on which
they were held, led him to think they had been offered to Mer-
cury.
But we do not build fo much upon thefe hints, as upon the much
clearer evidence of feveral expremons ftill in ufe in the Galic or
Celtic language, which fhew that this was not a facrifice, but only
an execution of criminals; and that the heaps or mounts, fo frequent
in many places, were raifed in this manner over them. To this
day, the Galic term for an outlaw, or one whofe life is forfeited to
public juflice on account of any crime, is fear air cbarn i " a man upon
a earn ;" and in fpeaking of fuch a perfon, the e air charn, " he is
upon a earn." Thefe expremons have a manifeft allufion to theDrui-
dicial cuflom of which we are fpeaking, and to the mode of judg-
ing and punifhing criminals upon thefe cairns in the manner a-
bove defcribed. After the execution of this fentence, the heap was-
increafed by a new ftratum of flones and rubbifh, to which every
one prefent contributed his mare, both to fhew his approbation of
thejudgment and his deteftation of the crime *. This procedure is
confirmed by the bones and afhes found (fometimes with, and fome-
times without, Hone-coffins) at different depths in the fame cam,
and
* See 2 Sam. xviii. 17. Jofh. vii. 26, Sec. — Lapidation was anciently a commen
mode of punifhment.