The Carlin or Hag's Stone
On top of the Common Crags overlooking Dunlop and the Glazert is a large procumbent boulder known as the ‘Carlin’s Stone or Stane’. This stone is not as well known as the Thorgatstane. A Carl is a commoner, a husband or in a derogatory sense, a churl or person of low birth. Carlin is the Scots equivalent of Gaelic “Cailleach”, meaning a witch or the 'old Hag', goddess of Winter. This would therefore be the Witch’s Stone, one of several in Scotland with this name.
Near 'Kirkhill' outside Stewarton are several Kilbrides. Bride, Brigit or St. Brigid was originally a Celtic Goddess linked with the festival of Imbolc, the eve of the first of February. She was the goddess of Spring and was associated with healing and sacred wells, therefore the antithesis of the Carlin. Carlin's Tooth is the name of a rock outcrop in the Scottish borders between Knocks Knowe and Carter Fell (Logan Mack 1926). Several Carling Farms are to be found near Darvel in Ayrshire.
Read more about this topic: Stones Of Scotland
Famous quotes containing the words hag and/or stone:
“Old Molly Means was a hag and a witch;
Chile of the devil, the dark, and sitch.”
—Margaret Abigail Walker (b. 1915)
“And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)