#solwaycoast

There are a handful of stones with names on the Dumfries and Galloway coast. The Devil Stane on the Arbigland shore was apparently spat out by the Devil after he bit a mouthful of Criffel. We asked on social media if you knew of any more named stones out there?

Thanks to Ding Little on facebook who told us: The legend stems from the Devil's "toothmarks' on the top of the stone which are actually the marks of the beginning of plug and feather to split it but was abandoned for some reason.

Hugh Mcmillan gave us lots of information on other stones in the area. He posted the following on our facebook page: May I refer you to an extract from the article on ‘Stanes’ in the hugely underrated ‘McMillan’s Galloway Encyclopaedia’?

“We may not have the sheer number of ancient stones than they have further north but typically we’ve got some of the weirdest and best.....The Taxing Stone, in Little Laight Hill near Cairnryan, was a toll marker but before that was, according to legend, the grave of Alpin, father of the first Scottish King, Kenneth MacAlpin, who was killed in Glenapp in 741 while leading a Scottish invasion of Galloway.

Try as you might, though, you’ll not find a stane with a better story to tell than the Lochmabenstone. This was a tribal meeting place and also, you can tell by the name, the religious centre for the Celtic Sun God, Mabon, our version of Apollo. It’s mentioned in the famous Ravenna Cosmography, a kind of mad road map of the world written by a monk in Ravenna in North Italy in the 8th century AD. Later in history the Lochmabenstone was a parlay point for the reivers to talk and exchange prisoners and was regarded as marking the southern limit of Scots territory. The Battle of Lochmabenstone, or Sark, on 23 October 1448 saw a Scottish army win a rare victory over the invading English forces of Henry Percy, 2nd Earl of Northumberland, 1,500 English soldiers killed to a mere 26 Scots.

Those are facts, sort of, but the stone is also shrouded in romantic legend. A local story claims it to be the stone that held the sword Excalibur, till Arthur pulled it out. Ridiculous ? In a recent book, The Quest for Merlin, published in 1985, Nikolai Tolstoy places Arthur’s mentor and Merlin in Lochmaben, as a priest of the Sun God.”