The Modern Antiquarian. Stone Circles, Ancient Sites, Neolithic Monuments, Ancient Monuments, Prehistoric Sites, Megalithic MysteriesThe Modern Antiquarian

Pech Stone and Lintlaw Burn stone

Natural Rock Feature

Folklore

Maybe as the RCAHMS record says, these are natural boulders, but they're both on high points, and it's interesting that burial sites should have (once) been so close to them.
The Pech Stane. -- This stone stands on the highest point of a ridge of moderate elevation some 700 yards south-west of Billie Mains steading and 300 yards south of the public road, in the parish of Buncle. It is of quartzite, deeply pitted in the process of weathering, and measures 4 feet in height by 4 feet 6 inches by 4 feet 6. An empty cist was found in 1897 some 20 to 30 yards west of the stone, and about 1814 a large cairn about 100 yards to the west was removed. This cairn was surrounded by a ring of large boulders, and a cist was found beneath. The stone is figured in Carr's History of Coldingham Priory, p.9, and in Muirhead's Birds of Berwickshire, vol. i, p. 314.

[..] Another stone stands on a knoll on the ridge to the south of the Lintlaw Burn. Its position is about 400 yards south by west of the Pech Stane; it is of greenstone, and measures 3 feet 3 inches in height by 3 feet 9 by 2 feet 3.
From 'History of the Berwickshire Naturalists' Club' v 26 (1923).

I looked in the Coldingham Priory book for the illustration, and also found -
The following fragment, for which the author is indebted to his friend Mr. George Henderson, surgeon, Chirnside, relates to the Cairn and Stone:--

Grisly Draedan sat alane
By the Cairn and Pech-stane;
Said Billie wi' a segg sae stout
I'll soon drive grisly Draedan out;
Draedan leuched and stalked awa,
Syne vanished in a babanqua.

The babanqua, or quagmire, into which these contentious streamlets flowed, was, no doubt, the now drained and cultivated Billy-mire. The rhyme Mr. Henderson picked up when a school-boy, from the recitation of an old farm-servant at Little Billy.
An older example of the rhyme can be found in the Scottish Journal, 1847.
Rhiannon Posted by Rhiannon
4th March 2012ce
Edited 16th May 2013ce

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