Clochmaben Stone

About Clochmaben Stone

The granite boulder stands over 7ft high with a girth of about 18 feet, it was placed here around 2500BC as part of a stone circle, originally of nine stones. Most of the others were removed by ploughing but one still remains (about 3 feet high) in the nearby hedge. Map or mab in Old Welsh means “son” and there are hints that he was the son of the Earth Mother. His youth made him important in fertility and virility rites and he also seems to have been linked with sun worship. Handfasting, non-church marriages before witnesses, and the fact that Mabon was the god of blacksmiths, are all very ancient folk memories which have lived on in Gretna’s modern romantic tradition.