Stand a lump of rock upright in a field for four thousand years and it collects stories the way a gatepost collects lichen. Britain is full of standing stones — circles, lone monoliths, rows, holed stones — and almost none of them come with a written explanation. What they come with instead is folklore: dancing giants, petrified wedding parties, stones that slip down to the river for a drink, and an awful lot of blame laid at the Devil's door. Here is a beginner's map of the legends you are most likely to meet, and a few ways to read them once you are standing in front of the stone itself.

Why the stones needed explaining

The people who raised these monuments left no notes. Later generations, looking at a ring of grey rock on a hillside, did what people always do: they asked what happened here, and answered with a story. Most of those stories fall into a handful of patterns.

Once you know the patterns, you can walk up to almost any stone in Britain and make a decent guess at the local tale. The shape of the monument often dictates the plot. A ring of smallish stones becomes a circle of dancers. Two tall outliers become a piper and a fiddler. A single leaning monolith becomes a petrified person, a marker, or something the Devil dropped.

Danced into stone

The commonest legend by far is petrification as punishment. A group of young women, or a wedding party, dances on a Sunday. A stern voice objects. Everyone is turned to stone on the spot, and there they stay.

The Merry Maidens near Lamorna in Cornwall are the classic example, with the two Pipers standing nearby — musician and dancers, caught mid-reel. Stanton Drew in Somerset has a wedding party, and the fiddler is generally said to stand apart from the rest. The Nine Ladies on Stanton Moor in Derbyshire are nine women who chose dancing over church. Long Meg and Her Daughters in Cumbria gets both versions: a coven of witches, or a Sabbath-breaking dance, depending on who is telling it.

There is usually a moral in there, and usually a practical detail. Look at where the outlier stones sit. Someone, long ago, had to explain why one stone was over there and the rest were here, and a fiddler was as good an explanation as any.

Stones that wander, drink and refuse to be counted

Not every stone stays put. A widespread belief holds that certain stones go down to a stream or river to drink — at midnight, when the church clock strikes twelve, or on one particular night of the year. Others are said to walk, to swap places, or to be somewhere different when you return in the morning.

Then there is the counting problem. The King's Men at the Rollright Stones in Oxfordshire, and Long Meg's daughters in Cumbria, both carry the same reputation: count them twice and you will get two different answers. The usual advice, if you fancy testing it, is to count the gaps rather than the stones, or to count from a different direction. The point of the story is not arithmetic. It is that the stones are not entirely ours, and they do not have to behave.

The Devil, the giant and the missing mason

Where a Christian origin story did not fit, the Devil was handed the job. The Devil's Arrows at Boroughbridge in North Yorkshire are said to be stones he flung at the neighbouring town, or at a church, and missed. Across the country you will find stones he dropped from his apron, stones he threw in a temper, and stones he was carrying when something distracted him.

Giants do similar work further north and west. And then there is Merlin, who in Geoffrey of Monmouth's twelfth-century account fetched Stonehenge from Ireland — a story that tells us far more about medieval politics than about prehistoric engineering. Legends have authors, and authors have reasons.

Holed stones, wishes and cures

Stones were also treated as tools. The practices recorded across Britain are remarkably consistent:

• Passing through. A child was passed through the hole of a holed stone to cure rickets or whooping cough. Men-an-Tol in Cornwall is the best known, and the number nine turns up again and again — nine passes, sometimes with a little earth or water.
• Crawling through. Adults did the same for back trouble, which is why some holed stones are called crick stones.
• Wishing. Walk round the stone three times, make your wish, and keep it to yourself.
• Leaving something behind. Pins, rags and coins have all been left at stones over the years — a habit that has made a mess of several sites and is best not continued.
• Touching for luck. A hollow, a lump or one particular stone in a circle often has a reputation for granting small favours.

The healing stories are folklore, not medicine. If a child is ill, see a doctor — the stone will still be there afterwards. And whatever you have read about passing through holes or pouring water over a monument, most of these sites are protected by law, and damaging one is a criminal offence. Look, photograph, walk round it. Do not rearrange it.

Kings, battles and buried gold

A great many stones are said to mark where a king fell, where an army was buried, or where a battle turned. Place names often carry the story: the King Stone, the Battle Stone, the King's Men. The other half of this tradition is treasure. Gold is buried beneath the stone, guarded by something you would rather not meet, and anyone who digs will come to a bad end. It is a tidy way of saying: leave it alone.

Reading a standing stone on site

If you want to do more than look, try this order of approach.

1. Read the name before you go. Check an Ordnance Survey map and a place-name dictionary. Welsh maen and carreg, Cornish men and Gaelic clach all mean stone, and the word attached to them is often the oldest story on the site.
2. Look at the shape first. Decide what the monument resembles before you read what it means. You will often spot why the legend took the form it did.
3. Check the local record. County record offices, local history societies and nineteenth-century folklore journals are full of variations that never reach the guidebooks.
4. Ask locally. The version told in the village shop is usually different from the version on the information board, and often better.
5. Behave well. Do not climb on the stones or move them, leave nothing behind, close gates and keep dogs under control near livestock.

Legends about standing stones were never fixed. They were told by people standing roughly where you are standing, with a view of the same hill and the same weather. You are allowed to add one of your own — just keep it verbal.

Photo: Syaibatulhamdi / Pixabay