The People's Songbag

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31588, 27 January 1968, Page 5

The People's Songbag

(Specially written for "The

Press" by

DERRICK ROONEY)

Many of the megalithic remains .scattered around the British countryside—Stonehenge being the most famous —are associated with legends even more interesting than the stones themselves. Stonehenge is reputed to have been transported, lock, stock, and boulder, from Ireland by the sorcerer Merlin on behalf of Aurelius Ambrosius, the fifth-century king of the Britons, who wanted to raise a monument to Britons who bad fallen in conflict with the Saxons—and the mystery of this legend is thickened by the scientific observation that some of the Stonehenge boulders, were in fact, transported a great dis. tance.

But the most interesting myths are reserved for the minor megaliths, such as the three upright stones, patriotically coloured red, white, and blue, at Penmaenmawr, which are said to be the remains of three women who winnowed corn on a Sunday, and were turned to stone for this impiety: or The Nine Stones, near Belstone, in Devon, a circle of (actually) 17 stones, said to have been maidens who were instantaneously fossilised because