Luath's Stone

NJ61SW 5 64040 14893

(NJ 6404 1490) Luath's Stone (NR)

OS 6" map, Aberdeenshire, 1st ed., (1869)

Luath's Stone (NAT)

OS 6" map, (1959)

Luath's Stone [NAT] (at NJ 64040 14893)

OS (GIS) AIB, May 2007.

Location formerly entered as NJ 6404 1490.

A standing stone 10 ft 2ins high, and a maximum girth of nearly 12ft. Coles (1903), who was told locally that the stone was sometimes called Macbeth's Stone, notes that Luath was the name of the hound of the Gaelic demi-god Cuchullin. But Simpson (1949), who gives the name as Luath's or Lulach's Stone, and which he designates as of Bronze Age date, says that it commemorates Lulach, King of Moray, a stepson of Macbeth, who after the latter's defeat and death in the battle of Lumphanan in 1057, carried on his stepfather's claims and war, until killed at Essie, near Rhynie, in 1058.

F R Coles 1903; W D Simpson 1949.

Luath's Stone, as described and illustrated by Coles, situated on a saddle between two hills c. 1150ft (350m) OD. It stands in a prominent position, yet a poor one for the remains of a stone circle. Its sheer size suggests that it is a commemorative stone and not merely a boundary stone. Name, but no tradition, known locally.

Visited by OS (NKB) 7 February 1968.

This standing stone is a large block of granite with a roughly rectangular section, and measures 1m in breadth from NE to SW by 0.7m in thickness 2.8m in height. The boulders lying at the base of the stone on the NW may include some of the packing of the stone-hole.

Visited by RCAHMS (JRS), 21 July 1998.