These stones are mentioned by Sara Maitland in her book “Gossip From The Forest – The Tangled Roots of Our Forests and Fairytales” in her chapter on Purgatory Wood. She relates their dark history as a a non-native spruce plantation and associations with Pugatory Burn which marked the western boundary of a nearby leper colony.
“The track I took into the Purgatory Wood meets the Southern Upland Way as it climbs up from New Luce, and a single path crossed the Purgatory Burn and runs eastward to Laggangairn ... and then beyond it to the Laggangairn standing stones – the last vestiges of a Bronze Age stone circle, carved with eighth century christian graffiti left by the pilgrims to St Ninians shrine at Whithorn”