Corbie

The farmsteading of Gormyre is said to have once had a ‘guid man’s croft‘, a triangle of land surrounded by a stone dyke and set aside “to give the devil his due”. This is a tradition common throughout Scotland and is also often associated with the ‘little people’ or ‘fairy folk’. Such sites can often be coincident with historic sites. The location is said to be on the hillside above Torphichen (Hendrie, 1986). This sounds like Gormyre Hill, which does support an earthwork.

References

Hendrie, William F. (1986) Discovering West Lothian, John Donald Publishers Ltd., Edinburgh

It is said that local lads and lassies used to plight their troth by clasping hands through the gap made by the two pieces of the split, top boulder.

Source: West Lothian District Council (198?), The Bathgate Hills, Robert MacLehose & Co. Ltd., Scotland

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’.