In Arran, the belief in fairies still lingers in the minds of the older inhabitants, and many curious stories are told of the pilfering habits and cunning tricks of the wee-folks, who held their midnight meetings within the stone circles and old forts of the Island.

Many of the minor relics of the stone period have been found beneath the moss and heath of the Arran glens and hills, but few of them have been deemed worthy of preservation. Arrow-heads of stone and flint are frequently picked up by the natives whilst digging peat in the moors [..] They are called elf-shots by the Islanders, and are supposed to have been used by the fairies long ago.

[..] As we find the little flint arrow-head associated with Scottish folk-lore as the elfin's-bolt, so the stone hammer of the same period was adapted to the creed of the Middle Ages. The name by which it was popularly known in Scotland, almost to the close of the last century, was that of the Purgatory Hammer [.. so the inhabitant of the burial cist could] with it thunder at the gates of purgatory..

The traditions.. which float around this class of the Arran grave mounds [chambered cairns] are associated with the fierce raids and clanish feuds of early times; and it is said that the ghosts of the buried dead were wont to rise from their graves and renew the combat in the shadowy folds of the evening mists.

A single Druidical stone is visible in front of the farm house of Sannox, in the middle of the green field. Many remains of a similar kind are still extant in the mosses and glens of the island. Of late much has been done to solve the enigma of those monoliths.

A pretty tradition has been handed down of a daughter of Fingal going out to meet her lover in the woods, having disguised herself by dressing in man's clothes; her lover, deceived by the circumstance, espied her amid the thick wooding, and, supposing her a foe, took his bow and drew an arrow from his quiver, and unfortunately killed his love. On the ground where she fell, he raised the tall monolith to commemorate the sad event, and had a second placed for himself not far from it - committing self-immolation. Her remains were buried entire, but his received all a chieftain's honours and druidical rites, placed in an urn, inside a stone chest, alongside of his love.

Such is the tradition as handed down. There is still a love of the superstitious and the marvellous amongst the islanders. Yet, strange it is, in the very centre and civilization here are as great attempts to revive that ancient spirit of magic, hence those seances and impositions. There seems little doubt now regarding one use of those stones, that they were raised to mark the last resting place of the ashes of the great. This seems quite established.