The devil was playing quoits on Beacon Hill on a Sunday, and in a rage at being told it was wrong, he threw these three to where they are now.
One of the quoits standing in Walker's Field was once taken away, and put over a ditch called the "Back Ditch" in the "Farm Close" to make a bridge; but it was always slipping, and although often put back, it would not rest, and they were obliged at last to take it back to where it now stands. Wheel marks can still be seen on it.—(From Chas. Batts, labourer, of Stanton Harcourt, aged 35, who had it from his father. January 1, 1898.)
[Mr. Akerman,[1] in 1858, records a rationalised version of the same story, as follows: "There is a tradition in the neighbourhood that the northernmost stone was once removed by an occupier of the land, and laid across a watercourse, where it served as a bridge over which waggons and carts for some time passed, and that it was restored to its old locality at the request of one of the Harcourt family. A groove in this stone, eight inches from the top, seven inches in width, and about three inches deep, is believed to have been caused by the wheels of the vehicles when it lay prostrate."]
[Joseph Goodlake of Stanton Harcourt (now of Yarnton), aged 63, in March, 1901, gave me the following particulars which he had from his father: "When the war was in England, the fighting ended at Stanton by those stones, and from there across to Stanlake Down by Cut Mill. Harcourt was the general; he was Emperor in England; he is buried in the church with his sword and gun and clothes." Further: "When the war was in England the officers used to hide behind them" (the Devil's Quoits) "from the bullets," and the men used to pick the bullets out of them when my informant was young.]
[The legend connecting the Quoits with a battle is confirmed by a story told by Tom Hughes:[2] "An old man in that
- ↑ Akerman, l.c. p. 431.
- ↑ T. Hughes, Scouring of the White Horse (1859), p. 32. There are several monuments to the Harcourt family in the church, the most conspicuous of which are two altar tombs with effigies in full armour; one to Sir Robert Harcourt, K.G., and his wife Margaret, 1471, the other to his grandson, Sir Robert, who was Henry VII.'s standard-bearer at Bosworth, and died some time after 1501. One of these two is apparently assigned to "the general."
The story of the fighting may well have arisen from the numerous discoveries of British and Anglo-Saxon remains that have been made in the
