The "Druidical" Stones at Rollright,
Oxfordshire, are said to have been originally a general and his army who were
transformed into stones by a magician. The tradition runs that there was a
prophecy or oracle which told the general,--
If Long Compton thou canst see,
King of England thou shalt be.
He was within a few yard of the
spot whence that town could be observed, when his progress was stopped by
the magician's transformation,--
Sink down man, and rise up stone!
King of England thou shalt be
none.
The general was transformed into
a large stone which stands on a spot from which Long Compton is not visible,
but on ascending a slight rise close to it, the town is revealed to view.
Roger Gale, writing in 1719, says that whoever dared to contradict this story
was regarded "as a most audacious freethinker." It is said that no man could
ever count these stones, and that a baker once attempted it by placing a penny
loaf on each of them, but somehow or other he failed in counting his own bread.A
similar tale is related of Stonehenge.
Source: James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps,
Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales (London: John Russell Smith, 1849), pp. 193-194.