I walked up here a few years ago in the wind and rain, climbed on top of the cairn and dropped my lovely camera which broke. No photos, no camera. I haven't been up there since. Thanks for the pics, Nick.
I was up there yesterday, a bright November day, clear but windy. The views are quite magnificent, and it's easily seen why they chose this location to build. I've appended a few of the photos I took.
About two miles west of St. Andrews, on the estate of Mount Melville, there is a conglomerate boulder 8 by 6 by 3 feet, pretty well rounded. It has been lodged on the bank of a valley, which bank faces the west... The nearest conglomerate rock is distant many miles to the north-west. There is a legend connected with this boulder as follows:
At the time St. Regulus built the Four Knockit steeple at St. Andrews, there lived a giant at Drumcarro Crags, a hill situated about five miles to the west; he was enraged at seeing this building rising up, and he resolved to demolish it, - so, having found a large stone, he borrowed his mother's apron to use it as a sling for the stone in order to hurl it against the new building. But when in the act of throwing it, the apron burst under the weight of the stone, and it fell short of the object at which it was aimed and rested on the bank where it now lies.
This legend receives geological confirmation in the circumstance that Drumcarro Crags bear about W.N.W. from the boulder, and judging by the situation of the nearest conglomerate rock, that was the direction from which the boulder must have come.
(Mount Melville is at NO483147, though I don't know if the hurled stone is still there). The story is collected in 'County Folklore VII - Fife' (1914).
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