Logan stone, Devonshire (1811)

Cooke, G. A. A topographical and statistical description of the county of Devon. London: Sherwood & Co., c.1830. p. 68.The name of rocking or logging-stone, is given to a stupendous block of granite, detached, and resting at its base on a rising narrow point of another mass, deep grounded in the channel of the river Teign. An equipoise was thus formed, and though its motion has ceased to be so sensible, as it is said to have been in former times, it may still be produced by pressing against the stone with some force.Toland, in his History of the Druids, is of the opinion that these holy jugglers made the multitude (to whom monuments of this kind were sacred) believe that they only could move them. The power of producing any surprising effect by a natural cause, discovered perhaps by accident, was sufficient, with the addition of a few mysterious words or ceremonies, to pass for preternatural endowments. This stone was made the instrument of condemning or acquitting criminals, and also of extorting confession. Its dimensions are ten feet high at the west end, and from the west to the eastern point, its length is about eighteen. The local circumstances of it are almost as extraordinary as the stone itself. The river Teign rolls its waters around, and it is seated among those wild romantic hills, whose shaggy sides are overspread with fragments separated from the craggs above.[Text may be taken from a different source or edition than that listed as the source by Somers Cocks.]

Etching

145x185mm

S036. PROUT, Samuel: RELICS OF ANTIQUITY, OR REMAINS OF ANCIENT STRUCTURES IN GREAT BRITAIN.