Folklore

Deil’s Stane
Natural Rock Feature

The Devil’s Stane.
This is a large rock which stands in the middle of a cultivated field near the parish church of Kemnay, Aberdeenshire, and which, tradition affirms, the Devil threw at the church from the neighbouring mountain of Bennachie, in order to revenge the good deeds of the parish priest.

A note to accompany a poem about the stone, in The Scottish Journal, 1847. It sounds like a good bit of geological speculation – the Boulder Committee of the Royal Society of Edinburgh say

there is a boulder of grey granite, called the Devil’s Stone, estimated to weigh about 250 tons, which lies not far from the old kirk. There is no rock of that nature in Kemnay parish, but there is at Bennachie, a hill about seven or eight miles to the westward.