The Mutiny Stones are a

megalith A megalith is a large stone that has been used to construct a prehistoric structure or monument, either alone or together with other stones. There are over 35,000 in Europe alone, located widely from Sweden to the Mediterranean sea. The ...

ic monument in the

Lammermuir Hills The Lammermuirs are a range of hills in southern Scotland, forming a natural boundary between East Lothian and the Borders. The name "Lammermuir" comes from the Old English ''lambra mōr'', meaning "moorland of the lambs". Geology The Lammer ...

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...

. Situated on Byrecleugh Rig, the nearest centre of habitation is at

Longformacus Longformacus ( gd, Longphort Mhacais) is a small village in Berwickshire in the Scottish Borders area of Scotland. It is around north-west of Duns, in the Lammermuir Hills. The Dye Water runs through the village, flowing east towards its confl ...

, some four miles away. The monument is constructed as a long

cairn A cairn is a man-made pile (or stack) of stones raised for a purpose, usually as a marker or as a burial mound. The word ''cairn'' comes from the gd, càrn (plural ). Cairns have been and are used for a broad variety of purposes. In prehis ...

, and is thought to date to the 3rd Millennium BC. The name of the monument is a corruption of the Scots, ''mittenfu' o stones''. This term arose because of a local legend that the

devil A devil is the personification of evil as it is conceived in various cultures and religious traditions. It is seen as the objectification of a hostile and destructive force. Jeffrey Burton Russell states that the different conceptions of t ...

was passing above and dropped a handful of boulders at the spot. The name was later corrupted to the ''Meeting'' stones, and thence to ''Mutiny'' stones. The monument has been repeatedly robbed of stone over the years by shepherds, to create

stell Stell is a name for a deep pool in a river where salmon rest and are fished, such as that found at Amble in Northumberland, England. Fishing using stell nets was made illegal by the Tweed Act Tweed is a rough, woollen fabric, of a soft, op ...

s and

dry stone wall Dry stone, sometimes called drystack or, in Scotland, drystane, is a building method by which structures are constructed from stones without any mortar to bind them together. Dry stone structures are stable because of their construction me ...

s. It now stands at at its highest point, although within recorded memory it was said to be high.

Bibliography

References

Berwickshire Stone Age sites in Scotland Archaeological sites in the Scottish Borders Scheduled monuments in Scotland Megalithic monuments in Scotland {{Borders-geo-stub