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Hünenbetter similar to those shown in Picardt's illustrations are still to be seen in Holland, but only in the north, where over fifty are known. They are of elongated rectangular form, built of upright blocks, and roofed with from two to ten cover-slabs. They all widen slightly towards the west end.
The latter name means Giants' Bed, and it seems probable that the former should be similarly translated, despite the suggested connection with the Huns, for a word Hünen has been in use in North Germany for several centuries with the meaning of giants. This is a simple elongated rectangle in shape, made of upright blocks and roofed with two or more cover-slabs.
Here the tombs lie on the side of a steep hill. They consist of dolmens often surrounded by stone circles from 25 to 33 feet in diameter. The cover-slabs of the dolmens usually rest on single uprights, and never on built walls. Several of the graves excavated contained more than one body, one yielding as many as seven.
In a good example of this at Keamcorravooly, County Cork, there are two large capstones and the walls consist of double rows of slabs, the outer being still beneath the cover-slabs. On the upper surface of the covers are several small cup-shaped hollows, some of which at least have been produced artificially.
At one end of the finer of the two was a small opening or window cut in the upright slab. This same grave contained a skeleton lying on the right side with the legs slightly contracted. These two tombs can hardly be described as dolmens; they seem to have had no cover-slabs, and the blocks, which were small, were let into the earth, scarcely appearing above the surface.
Contemporary with this later form of dolmen were several other types of tomb. This quickly developed into the true corridor-tomb, which had at first a small round chamber with one or two cover-slabs, a short corridor, and a round or rectangular mound.
Others have opposed to this the fact that the pits sometimes occur on vertical walls or under the cover-slabs, and have preferred to see in them some totemistic signification or some expression of star-worship. It is possible that we have to deal with a complex and not a simple phenomenon, and that the pits were not all made to serve a single purpose.
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