This is interesting because it sounds like the original version of EquinoxBoy’s tale – his has been updated with the combustion engine to make it more contemporary?
No tradition.. exists of any [stones] having been removed, or that the group has ever been otherwise than it is at present. A certain superstitious respect still attaches to the spot, and may even have had something to do with the preservation of these curious relics, for gossip still records how upon one occasion some farmer, more zealous in the cause of agriculture than archaeology, attempted to remove one of them, and that the work was immediately arrested by a violent storm of thunder and lightning.
From ‘On Certain “Markings” on the Druid Circle in Holywood’ by Dr Dickson, in Series 1 volume 3 of the Dumfries and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society.
dgnhas.org.uk/transonline/SerI-Vol3.pdf
With regard to the Certain Markings (proposed cup-marks), a later expedition felt they were merely natural.
dgnhas.org.uk/transonline/SerII-Vol4.pdf