Folklore

Ben Loyal
Rocky Outcrop

Janet and Colin Bord give a very strange tale for this mountain in their ‘Atlas of Magical Britain’, but as usual don’t reveal their sources, so perhaps a reader will know if this story is still current, or from where it originates.

The mountain is said to be magnetic and distorts compass readings, confusing hikers. There is supposed to be a large smelting furnace at its heart, where iron ore is smelted by dwarves. A standing stone somewhere on the mountain is called ‘the Stone of the Little Men’ and if you leave a silver coin and a drawing, the dwarves will make you your object and leave it on the stone for you.

The mountain does actually contain veins of the unusual earth elements La and Ce.

So, is this a recent romantic view of the mountain? or a weird memory of iron toolmakers and their newfangled technology?!

This story (or essentially a similar retelling of it)
themodernantiquarian.com/post/55818
is also attached to the mountain, according to
p159 of
The Folk-Lore of Sutherland-Shire
Miss Dempster
The Folk-Lore Journal, Vol. 6, No. 3. (1888), pp. 149-189.