The station stones and portal tombs of Britain and Ireland are among some of a many puzzling reminders of a fact that people walked a isles thousands of years ago. They were astronomical calendars, funeral places, and sites of prolonged lost ancient rituals. More recently, they’ve given birth to misconceptions and legends that try to explain usually how they came to be—and what happens to those who disregard them.
10 Nine Stane Rig
Scotland
The Nine Stane Rig (aka a Nine Stanes Stone Circle or a Ninestane Rig) is nestled among trees in a borderlands between Scotland and England. The antiquated stones are suspicion to have been erected as a calendar for internal farmers, revelation them when to plant their crops by measuring a transformation of a Moon opposite a circle. Later, it became a cairn, and that’s where a creepy partial comes in.
The round is usually a few miles divided from a now-abandoned Hermitage Castle. According to internal legend, a palace was once home to William de Soulis (or de Soules), a second ancient of a castle. The 13th-century duke was popularly famous as “Bad Lord Soulis” and spasmodic as “Terrible William.” With those nicknames, it’s no warn that a stories told about him embody his gusto for practicing black magic. It was a entertainment that necessitated a woe and murder of internal children, whom he kidnapped and killed in a dungeons of a castle.
At first, a locals could do tiny to stop him, as he was underneath a insurance of a suggestion informed named Robin Redcap. When de Soulis sole his essence to a Devil, he gained a insurance of Redcap and was betrothed that a usually thing that could ever kill him was a wire done of sand. He done no tip of that fact, so a townsfolk recruited a assistance of a sorceress of their own, Thomas of Ercildourne.
While a sorceress combined a sand-filled lead belt, a townsfolk shocked opposite their lord. They stormed a palace and dragged him to a circuitously Nine Stane Rig. A cauldron was watchful for him, and they firm him with a sorcery belt, rolled him adult in a square of lead, and melted him down.
Both Hermitage Castle and a Nine Stanes Stone Circle are presumably still condemned by a suggestion of Bad Lord Soulis, and people have claimed to still hear a screams of a children he murdered for his black rites and rituals.
9 Men-an-Tol
Cornwall, England
Men-an-Tol, a 3,500-year-old Bronze Age megalith, is one of a strangest hulk stones in Britain. It facilities a holed mill set between 3 other honest post stones. There is usually one other such holed mill in a country. No one is certain what a purpose of a holed mill creatively was, yet it’s given arise to a few legends.
Men-an-Tol is also famous as a Crick Stone, and it’s pronounced that children who are upheld behind and onward by a hole will be marinated of ongoing illnesses. It was generally compared with restorative rickets. Women who crawled by a mill underneath a light of a full moon would turn fruitful and shortly turn pregnant. It’s also pronounced that anyone who puts dual coronet pins on a tip of a holed mill and asks yes-or-no questions will have those questions answered by a transformation of a pins, nonetheless it’s not transparent what means “yes” and what means “no.”
Most of a phenomena credited to Men-an-Tol are pronounced to be a work of a defender angel that lives during a stones. While many fairies were immorality tricksters, a Men-an-Tol angel is a good one, suspicion to be means to both heal illness and remove a work of some-more sinful fairies.
Belief in changelings was a really genuine thing in Cornwall for a startling volume of time. People believed that fairies would take a baby tellurian child and reinstate it with one of their possess offspring. As a changeling grew up, it would turn some-more uneasy and reduction like a tellurian it seemed to be. Sometime between 1830 and 1860, a child suspected of being a changeling was upheld by a hole. It was suspicion that a good angel would be means to lapse a tellurian child to a family that it had been stolen from.
Part of a problem in last what a mill was for is a fact that we have no suspicion what it creatively looked like. It’s believed that a stones still station aren’t in their strange position and that they were once a partial of a incomparable mill circle, a ruins of that are still buried underneath a ground.
8 Long Meg And Her Daughters
Cumbria, England
Also antiquated to be around 3,500 years old, a mill round famous as Long Meg and her Daughters is a second-largest in England. The relic is comprised of 59 stones, yet it’s believed that there were creatively as many as 77 as good as dual cairns, that have disappeared.
The tallest mill is famous as Long Meg, that stands 3.8 meters (12.5 ft) high and is positioned outward a round itself. It’s pronounced that “Meg” refers to a internal wizard famous as Meg of Meldon, who was incited to mill for disrespecting a sanctification of a Sabbath and dancing on a dedicated day. The smaller stones are her daughters (or her coven), who assimilated her in her blasphemous dance.
One chronicle of a story states that mythological Scottish sorceress Michael Scott incited a coven to stone. Scott was a genuine person. He was a priest and academician whose work in astronomy, a occult, and demonology, along with his ability to review and pronounce languages like Arabic and Greek, incited him into someone who walked a line between magician, monk, and wizard himself.
Like a series of mill circles opposite Britain, it’s claimed to be unfit to accurately count all a stones. This is good, given if anyone ever succeeded, it would mangle Scott’s spell, and a witches would lapse to a land of a living. Some stories advise that if a square of a mill is chipped away, it’ll drain as yet it were alive.
Legend also says that a stones are utterly able of safeguarding themselves opposite anyone who would wish to pierce or destroy them. Sometime in a 1700s, a internal male named Colonel Lacy attempted to blow adult a stones in a circle, expected meditative that he was going to find a buried value infrequently pronounced to be underneath them. A terrible charge tore by a area, thwarting his skeleton and origination it transparent that a round had absolute protectors.
7 Knocknarea
County Sligo, Ireland
The ancient cairn that dominates Sligo’s limestone Knocknarea mountain is a largest of Ireland’s unopened neolithic cairns, suspicion to enclose a stays of an ancient funeral site. There are several mill structures on a tip of a hill, and a biggest is Meascan Meadhbha.
The ostensible Maeve’s Cairn is conjectural to be a final resting place of Connaught’s Queen Maeve, a soldier black who was given Connemara by her father. When she was comparing her resources to that of one of her husbands, a find of a usually thing he had that she lacked, a longhorn of equal quality, led to a epic story of a Cattle Raid of Cooley, one of many stories told about battles between Maeve and her neighbors.
Tradition states that when Maeve was buried in a cairn on Knocknarea, she was buried station and entirely armored with her stalk in her hand, confronting a instruction of her enemies from Ulster. Buried in a other cairns are some of her many critical warriors and others who had taken a mount for Connemara. The soldier Eoghan Bell was buried in Rath O’Fiachrach (which was expected Knocknarea), and he, too, was buried standing, confronting Ulster with his stalk in his hand.
After Bell’s death, a group of Connaught invariably seemed to have a tip hand. When a Ulstermen found out that their enemies still had a insurance of their lord, it’s pronounced they raided Bell’s funeral pile and dug him up. They reburied him elsewhere, upside down. From afterwards on, a battles were some-more uniformly matched.
6 Mitchell’s Fold
Shropshire, England
There were creatively around 30 stones during Mitchell’s Fold, station on a limit between England and Wales usually outward Chirbury. There are usually 15 left today, and a round has been antiquated to someday between 2000 and 1400 BC. Most of a stones are comparatively small, during reduction than a few feet tall. However, they’re connected with a large legend; it’s pronounced that one of a stones is a one that King Arthur pulled his sword from.
As with many station stones, there’s a fable of how Mitchell’s Fold came to be. A prolonged time ago, a drought seized a land. Crops withered, stock died, and people started to die, too. Fortunately, a area was also home to a pleasantly wizard who took empathize on her neighbors and gave them a lifesaving gift—that came with one condition. The present was a cow whose divert would never run dry as prolonged as any chairman usually took a singular bucket to fill from her during a time. For a while, a townspeople did accurately that. Where there’s good, there’s evil, though, and an immorality wizard milked a cow not into a pail, yet into a sieve.
When a peep of lightning illuminated adult a night sky and a cow saw all her squandered divert spilling onto a ground, she kicked a wizard and fled. When a townspeople went to a mountain a subsequent morning, they saw that something had incited a bad wizard to mill as an almighty punishment.
While a stones themselves are impossibly ancient, it’s opposite how prolonged a fable dates back. At a really least, it’s from a late 19th century, as a story was forged into a post during a circuitously church during that time.
5 Avebury And The West Kennet Long Barrow
England
The landscape of Avebury is dotted with antiquated monuments, station stones, and prolonged barrows. As one of Britain’s many famous megalithic sites, it’s second maybe usually to Stonehenge in popularity. That doesn’t meant we know really many about it, however. It’s positively developed for legends, that have sprung adult around a particular station stones opposite a area.
The Devil’s Chair is one of a largest of a station stones, and it sits where a Avebury round and West Kennet join. It has surprisingly tiny to do with a tangible Devil. Instead, it’s suspicion to extend a wishes of any lady who sits on it during a Beltane (May Day Eve) celebrations.
Not distant divided is a Diamond Stone. Legends contend it has been famous to cranky a highway during midnight, a attainment that competence or competence not have something to so with a puzzling total that some explain to have seen walking among a stones. People pushing past have reported activity that they’ve mistaken for a full-blown satisfactory or carnival.
The circuitously West Kennet Long Barrow was excavated in a 1950s and found to be a final resting place of during slightest 50 people. An progressing mine in 1859 substantially inadvertently broken some-more evidence, so we’re not certain what kinds of ceremonies and rituals competence have taken place there. Old legends tell of a bright figure that visits a site any Midsummer’s Day during sunrise, accompanied by a white chase with red ears, presumably a folktales and ruins of a many comparison ceremony.
For those who trust in a suspicion of ley lines, some-more new folklore about Avebury and a West Kennet Long Barrow suggests that a whole site sits during a intersection of dual vital ley lines—the lines of St. Michael and St. Mary. Believers toss around ideas such as a joining of appetite and power, and a site, generally a prolonged barrow, has turn a vital core for complicated pagans.
4 Stanton Drew
Somerset, England
There are 3 particular mill circles in Stanton Drew: The largest of a circles, famous as a Great Circle, has 26 stones that have survived given a Bronze Age. The Cove has 11 stones remaining, and a Northeast Circle still has 8 stones. The initial annals of them usually date from 1664, and it wasn’t until 1776 that they were totally mapped.
The many widely told story about a stones is a Christian story practical to a clearly ancient site. One Saturday, ages ago, a marriage was being hold in a Somerset countryside. After a wedding, of course, came a feast. As a day incited into night and midnight approached, everybody was carrying so many fun that they forgot about a coming Sabbath. As a time struck midnight, a wedding’s fiddler stopped personification and refused to continue—even when a bride demanded that a celebration keep going, even if she had to go to Hell to find a fiddler.
Once she started throwing difference like that around, a Devil himself showed up. Bearing a fiddle of his own, he played and played, faster and faster, until dawn. When a Sun rose, everybody had been incited to stone. The Great Circle and a Northeast Circle are done adult of a marriage guests, while a station stones of a Cove are a theologian and a luckless bride and groom.
Later, a fiddler who refused to play past midnight was found among a stones, and a fable is pronounced to come from his recounting of a tale. The Devil left with a souls of a whole marriage celebration (except a fiddler’s), and he also left with a guarantee that day: He’d be behind to play for them again.
3 Callanish Stone Circle
Isle Of Lewis, Scotland
According to legend, a station stones of Callanish (or Callanais) were buried underneath a earth until years ago, when a internal rancher was walking a island while he looked for rocks to build a wall with. He came opposite what he suspicion was a singular tiny stone, yet when he started to dig, he found that a mill kept going. He dug deeper and deeper and eventually unclosed a ancient mill circle.
Regardless of either or not they were ever unclosed by what had to be a many dynamic rancher in Scotland, excavations of a stones have authorised them to be antiquated to somewhere between 2900 and 2600 BC, and they were a core of activity for somewhere between 1,000 and 1,500 years. At that point, it seems that a executive round of stones was destroyed, and a rest of a area was lonesome in peat in what competence have been some arrange of protocol cleansing. In 1857, a peat was cut to exhibit a stones once more, maybe heading to their start story.
The stones have an peculiar alignment. It’s been found that any 18.6 years, a Moon is low adequate in a sky that it appears to boyant opposite a tops of a stones.
The Callanish stones’ Gaelic name is Fir Bhreig, that translates to “The False Men.” Like many of a neolithic mill monuments, this one also has a bit of Christian mythology and folklore trustworthy to a ostensible creation. Legend says that a stones were once men, spasmodic referred to as giants, who were visited by Saint Kieran. The companion attempted to modify them to Christianity, yet when they kept refusing, they were incited into a stones that still mount on a isle.
2 Kit’s Coty
Maidstone, England
All that stays of Kit’s Cody, a Neolithic chambered tomb, are 3 honest stones and a capstone. Its peculiar name comes from a fable surrounding a tomb. “Cody” simply means “house,” and “Kit” is expected a anxiety to a male named Catigern.
The story of Catigern and his brother, Vortimer, shows adult in several chronological papers several times. In 455, a brothers took adult arms to expostulate a Saxons off their lands. The outcome of a battles is unclear, yet Catigern was killed, and one of his other brothers became aristocrat after a genocide of their father.
The luckless Catigern is presumably buried underneath Kit’s Cody, yet his suggestion is a nervous one. The area is reported to be a site of unchanging bright reenactments of that fatal battle, where armies quarrel again and again for control over a circuitously travel opposite a river.
Legend says that if we revisit Kit’s Cody on a night with no moon, put any intent on a tip of a capstone, and afterwards travel 3 times around a mill counter-clockwise, a intent will disappear. There’s also a fable saying that it’s unfit to count a series of smaller stones that spawn a belligerent usually a brief stretch from Kit’s Cody. The ostensible Countless Stones are suspicion to be all that stays of another tomb, and if dual or some-more people try to count a stones, everybody will come adult with a opposite number.
Local science tells of an forward baker who motionless to find out once and for all how many stones there were by putting a fritter of bread on tip of any one. When he finished and went to count a loaves that were still in his basket, he died before he could pronounce a series of a stones. Another finale to that story says that when he counted a leftover loaves, he found some-more in his basket than he had brought in a initial place.
1 The Rollright Stones
Oxfordshire, England
The fable of a Rollright Stones is an aged one, initial created down in 1586.
There was an ancient aristocrat who motionless that he wanted to explain all of England for himself and combine a nation underneath his rule, so he prepared his infantry for conflict and started marching. When he reached Oxfordshire, he found a wizard station in his way. (According to some versions, a wizard was a barbarous seer and soothsayer Mother Shipton.) The wizard told him, “Seven prolonged strides shalt thou take, And if Long Compton thou canst see, King of England thou shalt be.”
The king, anxious by a idea, took his 7 strides. As his feet strike a belligerent on a seventh step, a Earth rose adult and blocked his view, condemning him and his men. The aristocrat was incited into what’s now famous as a King Stone, while his constant group make adult a King’s Men Stone Circle that stands around him. Other station stones are pronounced to be a Whispering Knights, all that stays of his less-than-loyal servants, who stood murmur behind his behind as he strode on to what he suspicion was happening and glory.
The group don’t always sojourn as stone, though. It’s pronounced that when midnight strikes, a stones quickly come to life. Some leave their place on a mountain and go down to a circuitously open to get a drink, while others join hands and dance in a circle. Anyone hapless adequate to be held in a area when it happens pays with their life or their sanity. Some also contend that a fairies that live underneath a mill round come adult and dance with a knights during midnight, and anyone who indemnification a stones or takes pieces divided with them will compensate a ultimate price.
For those who honour a stones, though, there are opposite legends: When immature women listen closely to a stones, they’re pronounced to hear a name of a male they will marry. A longtime entertainment place for a witches of circuitously Long Compton, a Rollright Stones sojourn among a many puzzling of all Britain’s station stones.
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10 Legends Of Ancient Megaliths And Stones From The British Isles
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