ABSTRACT
This site is made up of seventy-seven stones, each about ten feet in length, with a single large megalith at its entrance: ‘this the common people call Long Meg, and the rest her Daughters’ (Hardy 1892:166). The name and tradition have been associated with this monument since about 1600, when Reginald Bainbridge, ‘scole mister of Applebie’, reported to Camden: ‘They are commonlie called meg with hir daughters. They are huge great stones, long meg standes above the ground in sight xv fote long and tre fathoms about’ (Rowling 1976:77). Similarly, in 1634, three Norwich soldiers who visited the area refered to ‘Stony Meg and her 77 daughters as hard-hearted as herselfe’ (Hardy 1892:166; Grinsell 1976:164, 288; Legg 1904). Other tales surrounding the megaliths are of particular interest. Celia Fiennes, the diarist, writing circa 1703, refers to the site as Long Meg and her Lovers. ‘The story is that these soliciting her to an Unlawfull Love by an Enchantment are turned wt her into stone; the stone in the middle wch is called Meg is much bigger and have some fforme Like a statue or ffigure of a body, but the Rest are but Soe many Cragg stones’ (Grinsell 1976:165). Grinsell reports a similar story recorded by Stukeley in 1743, ‘and a variant stating that they were witches turned into stone’, noted by Hutchison in his 1794 History of Cumberland. Further, some said that ‘[i]f a piece be broken off Long Meg, she would bleed’ (ibid.).
