The twelve apostles of Holywood

As so many strange structures ~ dolmens, burial mounds and stone circles ~ have existed in our countryside for millennia without any real explanation. Folklore and stories however have inevitably grown around them. The Twelve Apostles stone circle near the village of Holywood, in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, can have no connection to Christianity ~ they were built around 4,500 years ago with an orientation towards the midwinter sunrise and some entirely pre-Christian purpose that we can only suppose. But the fact that there were once 12 looming stones seems to have swept all of that aside. In some stories these are considered to represent Jesus’ apostles, while in others ‘it is allowed that the apostles put them there’ ~ presumably when they were passing through Dumfries and had a few spare hours on their hands.

The circle now contains 11 stones, but there are records of 12 as recently as 1789, and of its disappearance by 1837. One story goes that when a farmer tried to move them he was immediately beset by a violent thunderstorm and lightning, and so quickly gave it up for fear of God’s wrath. Another tells of a ploughman who broke his plough against one of the stones. In the absence of the farmer he decided to remove the obstacle, and leave it in the nearby river. The farmer on his return was alarmed at the sacrilege of moving one of the apostles, but the quick-thinking ploughman assured him that it was only the traitor Judas that he had removed.