The earliest reference to the monument is on a 1771 map where it is refered to as “Mitten full of Stones”. A local legend tells how the devil was carrying stones in his mitten to Dunbar to build a dam across the Tweed to Kelso, when the mitten burst and the stones fell on the moor. There is also a tale of gold wrapped in a hide of an ox and buried beneath the cairn.
The cairn was excavated by Lady John Scott in 1871 who “failed to find anything of interest” and then in 1924 by James Hewat Craw.
Hewat Craw uncovered a number of walls and areas of disturbance which led him to the conclusion that the long cairn may have contained “enclosed chambers of one sort or another and which have as yet yeilded only relics of the stone phase of culture”
All information from
The Mutiny Stones, Berwickshire
By James Hewat Craw F.S.A. Scot
Proceeding of the Society of Scottish Antiquities 1925