The Maiden Stone: Bennachie’s Pictish Cross-Slab and Its Legend

Why it matters

At the foot of Bennachie, beside a quiet road west of Chapel of Garioch, stands one of the finest Pictish stones in the north-east. The Maiden Stone is a tall slab of pink granite, about 3.2 metres high, carved on one side with a Christian cross and on the other with the strange symbols the Picts used. It belongs to the period when the Picts had become Christian but still marked their monuments with their own ancient signs, and it is the best example of that blend anywhere in the Garioch.

What is carved on it

The east face carries a cross with a round, disc-shaped head. On the west face, at the top, a figure stands with arms outstretched between two fish-like monsters, which may be Jonah and the whale or a Pictish image of some lost story. Below are a centaur-like beast, a notched rectangle crossed by a Z-shaped rod, a Pictish beast, and a mirror and comb, a pairing often read as marking a woman. Fragments of an ogham inscription have also been recorded. The granite is coarse and worn, so the carving is clearest in low, raking light.

The legend of the maiden

There is a notch out of one side of the stone, and the story explains it. The daughter of the laird of Balquhain was baking bannocks when a stranger wagered he could build a road to the top of Bennachie before she finished her baking. If he won, she would be his. The road was done before the last bannock, and the stranger was the Devil. She fled, he caught her by the shoulder, and in answer to her prayer she was turned to stone; the missing chunk is where his hand closed on her. Another version tells of the laird’s daughter killed in a scuffle as she eloped. Either way the stone has been “the Maiden” for centuries.

Visiting

The stone stands at the roadside with a small parking space beside it. It is free to visit, but since 2006 it has been covered during the winter months to stop frost damage, so go between spring and autumn. An information board explains the carvings.

Around the Maiden Stone

This is one of the richest corners of Scotland for ancient stones. Three miles south-east, on the edge of Inverurie, East Aquhorthies is the most complete recumbent stone circle there is, and the excavated circle at Loanhead of Daviot is just north. In Inverurie itself is the earlier Brandsbutt Stone, with its ogham inscription, and further west the enigmatic Newton Stone bears an inscription no one can read.

The ground below Bennachie is battle country too. In 1411 the Highland army of the Lord of the Isles fought the Earl of Mar a few miles east at Red Harlaw, and in 1308 Robert the Bruce broke the Comyns at Barra, near Oldmeldrum. For whisky, Glen Garioch at Oldmeldrum is one of Scotland’s oldest distilleries. For more stones with a story, see our guide to the famous stones of Scotland.

Sources

• Historic Environment Scotland — Maiden Stone; scheduled monument SM90210.
• Aberdeenshire Council Historic Environment Record — Maiden Stone (MAB19072).
• Canmore — Maiden Stone, Drumdurno.