The King Stone

The 'King Stone' stands on the lower slope of a long mound - the mound that stopped the King seeing Long Compton in the legend. William Stukeley called the mound the 'Archdruid's Barrow' but others now believe it to be a natural feature. He said "near the archdruid's barrow by that called the King Stone is a square plot, oblong, formed on the turf. Hither, on a certain day in the year, the young men and maidens customarily meet and make merry with cakes and ale." - The Rollright Stones and Their Folk-Lore, by Arthur J. Evans, in Folklore, Vol. 6, No. 1. (Mar., 1895), pp. 6-53.

I stand with the 'King Stone' at my back and stretch my neck in an attempt to see Long Compton ..... "no King of all England shall I be!" The 'King Stone' stands behind a black iron fence, I'm unsure as to whether it's to protect me from it, or it from me - 'Beware Dangerous Animals'. The 'King Stone' is twisted unattractively like some unfinished statue by Henry Moore or some sickened vistim of polio. There is an old story told by a farrier from Hook Norton, in the ancient past an immoral and bad King tricked Wayland the Smith into making him an enchanted suit of armour, but upon wearing it the King became twisted and deformed on account of his wickedness and finally turned to stone, for only the good faeries could don the armour without risk of harm.

"The fairies dance round the King-stone of nights. Will Hughes, a man of Long Compton, now dead, had actually seen them dancing round. "They were little folk like girls to look at." He often told a friend who related this to me about the fairies and what hours they danced. His widow, Betsy Hughes, whose mother had been murdered as a witch, and who is now between seventy and eighty, told me that when she was a girl and used to work in the hedgerows she remembered a hole in the bank by the King-stone, from which it was said the fairies came out to dance at night. Many a time she and her playmates had placed a flat stone over the hole of an evening to keep the fairies in, but they always found it turned over the next morning." - The Rollright Stones and Their Folk-Lore, by Arthur J. Evans, in Folklore, Vol. 6, No. 1. (Mar., 1895), pp. 6-53.

There is perhaps a more prosaic reason as to the uncomfortable shape of the 'King Stone' - from letter from a W Parry to William Stukeley himself, just before Christmas 1742: " I have, as hundreds have done before me, carried off a bit from the King, his Knights, and Soldiers, which I intend to send or keep for you." Notes and Queries from May 14th 1859 illuminates this tradition further: "My guide told me that it was daily diminishing in size, " because people from Wales kept chipping off bits to keep the devil off," and that he could remember it much larger. My guide was born half a mile off, at Long Compton, and had, he said, lived there "all his days.""

And this from 'The Rollright Stones and Their Folk-Lore', by Arthur J. Evans, in Folklore, Vol. 6, No. 1. (Mar., 1895), p.23: "Chips were taken from the King-stone "for luck," and by soldiers "to be good for England in battle." Betsy Hughes told me that her son, who had gone to India as a soldier, had taken a chip with him, "but it brought him no luck, for he died of typhus." A man told me that he had been offered as much as a pound for a chip at Faringdon Fair; and the Welsh drovers, who used to trench the road with their cattle before the railway was made, used continually to be chipping off pieces, so that formerly the stone was much bigger than it is now. A man at Great Rollright gave me a chip that he had kept in his house for years. Not withstanding the prevalence of this practice there were many who held that to do an injury to the stones was fraught with danger. In Wales one of the most frequent punishments that falls upon those who thus transgress against the stones is the breaking down of the transgressor's wagon, and this belief still survives at Rowldrich. A ploughman informed me that one day a man who was driving along the road from Banbury swore to a friend who was with him that he would carry off a chip of the King-stone "though his wheel locked." He got down from his cart and chipped off a piece of the stone, but when he tried to drive on he found that one wheel was locked in such a way that nothing he could do would make it go round again."

"It was said that a miller at Long Compton thinking the stone would be useful in damming the water of his mill, carried it away and used it for that purpose; but he found that whatever water was dammed up in the day disappeared in the night, and thinking this was done by the witches, and that they would punish him for his impertinence in removing the stone, he took it back again, and though it required three horses to take it to Long Compton, one easily brought it back." - Notes and Queries, April 8th 1876.

"A certain man of wealth, the lord of the manor of Little Rollewright, Humphrey Boffin by name, resolved to remove the King's Stone to the courtyard of his own dwelling, about a mile distant, at the foot of the hill.

The country people dissuaded him from making the attempt, telling him that no good would come of it; but he, being an intemperate, violent man, would not be thwarted of his headstrong will, and commenced the attempt.

He thought to accomplish his purpose with a wagon and four horses, but, though the latter were of a famous breed and remarkably strong, they could not stir the stone a single inch. He then yoked another four to the team, but still without success; again and again he made the same addition, nor was it until four-and-twenty horses had been attached to the load, that he was able to effect its removal.

At length Humphrey Boffin triumphed, and the King's Stone stood in the centre of his own courtyard. But his triumph was of short-lived duration, for no sooner had the shades of night appeared, than an indescribable tumult appeared to surround his house, waxing louder and fiercer as the night drew on; nothing was heard but groans and shrieks, the clash of weapons, and the direful din of battle, which noises lasted till the morning, when all again was still. Humphrey Boffin was greatly frightened; but, for all that, his heart was not changed, and in spite of omens he swore he would keep the stone. The second night was worse than the first; on the third, the uproar of the two were combined, and then Humphrey Boffin gave in.

Adopting his wife's counsel (for she, clever woman, saw at once where the shoe pinched), he agreed to restore the King's Stone to the place where Mother Shipton had commanded it to stand. But, the difficulty was how to accomplish the task. It had taken four-and-twenty horses to drag the stone down hill. How many must there be to carry it up again? A single pair settled the question : they wer no sooner in the shafts than they drew the wagon with perfect ease; nor did they stop to breathe nor did they turn a hair on their up-hill journey!

The country people, however, were right. The attempt did Humphrey Boffin "no good;" the civil war breaking out shortly afterwards, his homestead was burnt and his house ransacked by Cromwell's troopers, and he himself, endeavouring to escape - without Mrs. Boffin- tumbled into a well and was drowned. The lady, it is added, eventually consoled herself by marrying the captain of the troop, who, when the wars were over, became a thriving farmer and leader of the conventicle at Banbury." - from p163 of 'Household Words', an article on Mother Shipton, in volume 14, for July-December 1856.