A young man had seduced a girl under promise of marriage, and she proving
with child, was deserted by him: The young man was called before session;
the elders were particularly severe. Being asked by the minister the cause
of so much rigor, they answered, "You do not know what a bad man this is;
he has broke the promise of Odin."
Being further asked what they meant by the promise of Odin, they put him in
mind of the stone at Stenhouse, with the round hole in it; and added, that
it was customary, when promises were made, for the contracting parties to
join hands through this hole, and the promises so made were called the promises
of Odin.
It was said that a child passed through the hole when young would never
shake with palsy in old age. Up to the time of its destruction, it was customary
to leave some offering on visiting the stone, such as a piece of bread, or
cheese, or a rag, or even a stone. The Odin stone, long the favourite trysting-place
in summer twilights of Orkney lovers, was demolished in 1814 by a sacrilegious
farmer, who used its material to assist him in the erection of a cowhouse.
This misguided man was a Ferry-Louper (the name formerly given to strangers
from the south), and his wanton destruction of the consecrated stone
stirred so strongly the resentment of the peasantry in the district
that various unsuccessful attempts were made to burn his house and holdings
about his ears.
Source: County Folk-Lore, vol.
3: Examples of Printed Folk-Lore Concerning the Orkney & Shetland Islands,
collected by G. F. Black and edited by Northcote W. Thomas (London:
Folk-Lore Society, 1903), p. 2. Black's sources: Principal Gordon
of the Scots College at Paris in Archæologia Scotica, vol. 1, p. 263.
Capt. F. W. L. Thomas in Archæologia, , vol. 34, p. 101. Daniel Gorrie, Summers
and Winters in the Orkneys, 2nd ed. (London, 1869), p. 143.
Notes : Orkney preserves many
legends and folktales connected to the Odin Stone, which remained important
in the lore, customs and practises of Orcadian tradition for nearly 1000 years
after the "official" end of the Pagan Period in the Orkney Isles. In Orkney,
Odin - or as he was also known locally, "Wodden" - is remembered as, amongst
other things, a god of weddings and oaths.