The Auld Wifes Lifts Natural Rock Feature View all content for The Auld Wifes Lifts

F.R. Coles wrote this about the stones in 1906 "Auld Wives' Lifts belong, in the megalithic folk-lore, to the section which comprises legends of women, or witches, or carlines, who transport through the air masses of stone, great or small, and here and there drop them ; thus forming cairns, groups of standing stones, or single groups of enormous blocks, like the pierres levies 'at Poictiers and other French localities. This remarkable group on Craigmaddie Muir has also associations with another phase of superstition ; for Mr Robertson observes that it is " still necessary for all strangers visiting this enchanted place for the first time, to creep through it, if they wish to avert the calamity of dying childless." He notes the old spelling was Craig-madden, and translates madden as = moid/lean, entreaty, supplication : The rock of prayer."

Posted by fitzcoraldo 30th December 2005ce

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