This is just one of the many stories about Long Meg and Her Daughters, a stone circle at Little Salkeld, Cumbria. It can be found in the lovely Eden Valley between Penrith and Lazonby. Long Meg is a 12-ft. high stone standing outside and overlooking a large circle of some 66 smaller stones which are the Daughters.

      According to one popular legend, a coven of witches holding their Sabbat were turned to stone by the wizard Michael Scot in the 13th century. Another version of the same story tells how the witches chose this place for their 'infernal dances' and were turned into pillars of stone by the prayers of a saint.

       In common with many other stone circles is the belief that the exact number of stones cannot be accurately counted. One story says that if anyone can count them twice and arrive at the same number, then the enchantment will be broken. There is also a tradition that if Long Meg itself is ever broken, the stone will run with blood.
      'When I first saw this monument, as I came upon it by surprise, I might overrate its importance as an object; though it would not bear comparison with Stonehenge,' wrote William Wordsworth from nearby Dove Cottage, Grasmere, at the beginning of the 19th century. 'I must say I have not seen any other relic of those dark ages which can pretend to rival it in singularity and dignity of appearance.'
      No one can say with any certainty who erected the megaliths or for what purpose. Their very age precludes the popular claim that they were built by the Druids. And, in fact, it has been pointed out that the Druids held their religious rites in forest groves. (Like Long Meg and Her Daughters, most circles are to be found in exposed locations.)     

       One suggestion is that in a primitive agrarian society they were a sort of astronomical calendar to predict seasonal changes. The sun can be seen at a particular position in relation to the stones at various times of the year. Long Meg, for instance, throws its shadow to the farthest perimeter of the large circle (the Daughters) at midwinter sunset.           
      Another theory, much favoured at present, involves earth-energy. Dowsers say they can discern underground energy travelling along ley-lines between stone circles. Some people claim the circles were built as a kind of access point with megaliths like acupuncture needles on the energy meridians.

       The romantic Wordsworth would probably have been fascinated by such theories which add to the 'singularity' and 'dignity' of the stones. He expressed in the following lines the aura of mystery surrounding Long Meg and Her Daughters: