No, it's not me... the great erratic... but it could be ;) Instead it's a stone, a big one, near Howwood and Kilbarchan. I had passed nearby many a time along the cycle path to Lochwinnoch and beyond but never made the short detour to see it and pay it hommage. When I lived in Warsaw, there were erratic boulders all over. Indeed, the Glaz Mazur of Piasceczno was almost as big as this one. It was fenced in near a housing estate to the south of the Polish capital which only made it seem more fantastic. You can see the great Polish rock here:
But, yes, the Cloch-A-Druid stone is noted for its one piece size and for travelling a good many miles to get here (who says rocks don't roll?). Theodore Brotchie makes reference to it in his Some Sylvan Scenes Near Glasgow and includes a rather nice little pencil sketch of it too.
This huge mass of whinstone is not an outcrop,
but has been hewn from an elevated rock
a little to the east and on which stands a farm-house
called, also, Clochodrich. So late as 1790 it rested on
a very narrow base, and a writer in that year supposed
that at one period it had been a rocking-stone. Chalmers,
in his " Caledonia," seems to think that it was a battle-
stone of the old tribes of Strathclyde. Hut the name
which tradition has handed down the ages rather suggests
that in prehistoric days the weird rites of Thor and Odin
were celebrated around this ancient temple, while the
Bael-fires gleamed from its surface. Certainly its position
commands on the one hand the site of Beli-geith, and
on the other the rocking Druidical stone of Lows in Beith,
which serves to show in some degree that its site was
selected in remote ages for purposes of signalling.
Whether for Druidical rites, as the names suggests, or as
a battle-stone from which the gathering-fire would flame
its alarm, we cannot tell, but that for some such purpose
it was used there can be no doubt. Our sketch conveys
an idea of its shape and huge proportions, and a
measurement of its dimensions gives us a length of 22
feet: breadth, 17 feet; and height, 12 feet. Whate'er
the history of Cloch-a-Druid, its lines have fallen on
pleasant places these days. It stands in the midst of a
peaceful agricultural country, and as we sketch its rude
form, the only sound to break the stillness of the summer's
afternoon is the restful wimple of the little burn of St.
Bride, which meanders along its pebbly bed but a few
yards from the base of the rude memorial.
Check it out. You won't regret it.
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