It is said that there was a third stone associated with this site standing where the farm of Clinkingstane was subsequently built. Local tradition has it that this was the trysting place of a young heiress and her lover who had a ‘lang pedigree’ but little in the way of wordly goods.
After failing to have the suitor transported to the colonies the girls father had an armed band slay him. After a desperate fight the ruffians fled as the heiress came upon them. Finding her lover murdered she is said to have died at his side of a broken heart.
A poem attributed to George E.S. Shanks of Whitburn, West Lothian commemorates the event and stone as follows:
One long embrace, one concious kiss,
And both our souls had fled,
And there beneath the Clinkin’ Stane,
Two lovers we lay dead.
Source: West Lothian District Council (198?), The Bathgate Hills, Robert MacLehose & Co. Ltd., Scotland
The word ‘Clink‘ in Scots can mean either of the following, some of which may be appropriate:
money, telltale, beat, snatch, compose, flinty rock
The geology of the area supports sedimentary rocks that could be construed as ‘flinty’.