So sacred are these stones that, "it is generally averred hereabouts," writes Aubrey, "that pieces of them putt into their Wells, doe drive away the Toades, with which their wells are much infested, and this course they use still. It is also averred that no Magpye, Toade, or Snake was ever seen here."

The common people about Stone-henge entertain a notion, that no one could ever count the number of the stones, as they now stand; and that, should any one succeed in this attempt, instant death would be the consequence of his temerity.

..a literary reference occurs in William Rowley's The Birth of Merlin, a play published in 1662, but believed.. to have been staged forty or fifty years previously.

..and when you die,
I will erect a monument upon the verdant plains of Salisbury:
no king shall have so high a sepulchre,
with pendulous stones that I will hang by art,
Where neither lime nor mortar shall be used,
a dark enigma to thy memory,
for none shall have the power to number them.

That the tradition was well known is indicated by the fact that King Charles II spent October 7, 1651, 'reckoning and rereckoning its stones in order to beguile the time'. Colonel Robert Phelips, who accompanied his sovereign, added, 'the King's Arithmetike gave the lye to that fabulous tale.

That was a good Inn down in Wiltshire where I put up once, in the days of the hard Wiltshire ale, and before all beer was bitterness. It was on the skirts of Salisbury Plain, and the midnight wind that rattled my lattice window came moaning at me from Stonehenge. There was a hanger-on at that establishment (a supernaturally preserved Druid I believe him to have been, and to be still), with long white hair, and a flinty blue eye always looking afar off; who claimed to have been a shepherd, and who seemed to be ever watching for the reappearance, on the verge of the horizon, of some ghostly flock of sheep that had been mutton for many ages. He was a man with a weird belief in him that no one could count the stones of Stonehenge twice, and make the same number of them; likewise, that any one who counted them three times nine times, and then stood in the centre and said, "I dare!" would behold a tremendous apparition, and be stricken dead. He pretended to have seen a bustard (I suspect him to have been familiar with the dodo), in manner following...

On Midsummer morning a party of Americans, who had left London for the purpose, visited Stonehenge for the purpose of witnessing the effects of the sunrise on this particular morning. They were not a little surprised to find that, instead of having the field all to themselves as they had expected, a number of people from all parts of the country side, principally belonging to the poorer classes, were already assembled on the spot. Inquiries failed to elicit any intelligible reason for this extraordinary early turn out of the population except this, that a tradition, which had trickled down through any number of generations, told them that at Stonehenge something unusual was to be seen at sunrise on the morning of the summer solstice.

Stonehenge may roughly be described as composing seven-eighths of a circle, from the open ends of which there runs eastward an avenue having upright stones on either side. At some distance beyond this avenue, but in a direct line with its centre, stands one solitary stone in a sloping position, in front of which, but at a considerable distance, is an eminence or hill. The point of observation chosen by the excursion party was the stone table or altar, near the head of and within the circle, directly looking down the avenue. The morning was unfavourable, but fortunately, just as the sun was beginning to appear over the top of the hill, the mist disappeared, and then for a few moments the on-lookers stood amazed at the phenomenon presented to their view. While it lasted, the sun, like an immense ball, appeared actually to rest on the isolated stone of which mention has been made, or, to quote the quaint though prosaic description of one present, ' it was like a huge pudding placed on a stone.'

[..] Unless it is conceivable that this nice orientation is the result of chance,—which would be hard to believe,—the inference is justifiable that the builders of Stonehenge and other rude monuments of a like description had a special design or object in view in erecting these cromlechs or circles, or whatever the name antiquarians may give them, and that they are really the manifestations of the Baalistic or sun worship professed by the early inhabitants of Great Britain [..]

JAY AITCH.

On the last day of the 19th century, two of the uprights of the outer Circle fell. There is an old saying that the fall of one of these stones foretells the death of a Sovereign. In January 1901, however, just before the seeming fulfilment of the omen in the death of Queen Victoria, the two newly fallen stones were raised and set up again. At the same time a worse thing was done amid the protests of all the old lovers of Stonehenge. The great Leaning Stone which for nearly three centuries had reclined on the top of a short bluestone in front of it, and in this posture was the central figure, so to speak, of the Stonehenge known to all who had ever visited Salisbury Plain and to the whole world beside through the drawings of Turner and Constable - this hoary monster, bowed under the weight of innumerable years, was dragged up from its recumbency, bolted, concreted, and stiffened into an unnatural uprightness and now stands rigid and awkward as an aged man stayed up into an affectation of youth.

A vicar he knew accompanied a small party there for a couple of days. The first day they wandered round the stones till they came upon the so-called Slaughter Stone. Here they paused, until a small dog in the party sat down and howled dismally. The next day they returned to the same spot and the dog repeated its performance. Everyone was most impressed and told Mr Lethbridge about it later. 'The dog knew,' they said.

Lethbridge had been very amused by this tale, because the stone's name is simply a piece of romantic supposition, and there is no evidence that the stone has ever had any sacrificial function. His interpretation of the event was that the dog had sensed the mood of the people as they looked at this 'site of slaughter' and had howled in response to their unease.