Yet another boulder with a name in the vicinity of Bourtie and its circles. A report from the Boulder Committee of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1872) mentions it:
Boulder, about 20 tons. Longer axis E. and W. Called “Bell Stane,” the church bell having once hung from a post erected in it.
There’s a picture on the Canmore website which shows it in 1902, and calls it The Bell Rock. And on a 25” map from 1900 it gets called Bellman’s Stone, so it has a variety of similarish names to choose from. Maybe someone should go and tap it to see if it’s really called the Bell Stone because it rings. Or, since we’re in Scotland, could it even be a Bel stone like Beltane. I mean maybe you would ring a bell from it, though you’d think it’d be better to ring it from the church itself – it seems a bit like a convenient way to Christianise it perhaps. Ah the realms of speculative folklore etymology.
"Ah the realms of speculative folklore etymology."
Niche? You? Never.