ploughing there with oxen, they yoked a good many together, and tried to pull the Longstone out of the ground, but "something" held it firm. (A similar story was told me by a countryman on the Wiltshire Downs, of the fine dolmen known as "The Devil's Den," near Marlborough. The chains with which the horses and oxen pulled at the dolmen always flew in pieces.) Further, "when the Longstone hears the clock strike twelve, it runs round the field," as almost every child in the place will tell you.[1] Within living memory, children with whooping-cough and rickets used to be put through one of the holes in the stone. Traditions of bloodshed also cling round the Longstone; some say that it marks the burial place of a Danish chief killed in a battle at "Woeful Danes' Bottom," about half a mile distant, where "the blood ran as high as the wheels of a cart," and the victory was won by women who gave the Danes poisoned pancakes to eat.[2] At the battle of "Woeful Danes' Bottom," which is much talked about, "the soldiers shot through the holes of the Longstone"; and all the tumuli or "tumps" in the neighbourhood are held to be "the soldiers' graves." Three or four years ago, a farmer found a quantity of bones in a mound hard by. An underground passage, popularly supposed to go from a house called "The Lammas" (on or adjoining the site of a priory) to Minchinhampton Church, also "ran with blood" at the time of the battle!
"Woeful Danes' Bottom" is a place for ghosts. Men on horseback come through the gate at night. A woman told me how she was followed one night, along the road leading to the Bottom, by a ghostly dog. "I could see right through him, through his ribs." In all this atmosphere of bloodshed and ghostliness the Longstone too is shrouded.
In Avening parish, about half a mile south of the Longstone, is "Tinglestone," a menhir crowning a long barrow; Mr. Frost of Avening tells me that it too "runs round the field when it hears the clock strike twelve." "Crackstone" Farm, also
- ↑ A similar story is told of the Rollright Stones; see [Sir] A. J. Evans, "The Rollright Stones and their Folk-lore," Folk-Lore, vol. vi., pp. 24 et seq.
- ↑ There are other traditions of Danes near Bisley, and near Sapperton is a road called "Daneway" or "Denaway,"—the latter form probably preserving the O.E. genitive plural.
