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The tale of the standing stones of Stanton Drew you may choose to dismiss or believe.
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It happened they say many years ago on the night of a midsummer's eve. A young man and
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woman had plighted their troth and been married that same afternoon. And now with their guests
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they determined to dance til the rise of the midsummer moon. They'd hired a harper and
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offered them coin if merry dance tunes they would strum. So the harper he played and the
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hours flew by 'til the poor harper's fingers were numb. Tomorrow's the Sabbath the harper
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cried out. You should go to your home and your bed! Or the Devil will come here and
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make you his own. But they laughed and kept reveling instead. The
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bride called to a piper to play on their pipe and the poor harper left them to rest. And
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the piper piped up and the midnight hour passed and they danced on like they were possessed.
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Next morning the harper returned to seek out a hood they'd mislaid in the night. In the
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glow of the dawn of the midsummer sun they saw a remarkable sight.
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Of the bride, groom and guests who but hours before had danced, there was nowhere a trace.
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Instead where they'd capered and croused without care a stone circle stood in their place.
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A circle of stones on the undisturbed grass where no circle of stones stood before. And
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as for the revelers who danced past the dawn they were heard of and seen of no more.
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To all wedding parties on midsummer's eve do not dance when the sabbath is due. Heed
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this warning or you may find yourselves transformed like the standing stones of Stanton Drew.
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The Stanton Drew circles are supposed to be people who gathered for a wedding long, long
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ago. They had the wedding on the Saturday but they didn't know when to stop. They didn't
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realise that their dances and celebrations were going on through Saturday night towards
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Sunday morning and they were encouraged by a mysterious musician who arrived from nowhere
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and got them to keep on dancing. But when they passed the fatal division into Sunday
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morning they were profaning the sabbath by making merry upon it and so automatically
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got turned to stone to punish them for their sins. All of course except the mysterious
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musician who was probably the Devil himself and vanished cackling to head on for another
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misdeed.
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The story is first recorded in the 17th century by one of the great founders of the discipline
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of archaeology, a man called John Aubrey. He said that the circles were called the Wedding
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in his time which commemorates the fatal wedding which ended up in the petrified dancers. There
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are no less than three magnificent stone circles at Stanton Drew and another three stones set
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in near the church so this is quite a spread-out magnificent elaborate site. They are a series
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of ceremonial monuments. You can call them temples for short, built around about four
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and a half thousand years ago to celebrate a religion of which we know absolutely nothing.
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To keep people from dancing on the Sabbath, to point to something in the landscape and
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say that could be you if you don't pay attention is an absolutely wonderful way of seizing
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people's imaginations. Legends work really well if you can literally touch them, in other
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words if they're about solid objects which you can see to the present day and to which
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you can relate and Stanton Drew hits that one absolutely straight on.