You know what they say! When in Bungay, summon the old Gods.

On an earlier excursion to the Black Shuck Festival in Bungay, Suffolk, I found myself faced with an ancient stone and some curious folklore. While the church of St Mary’s is best known as the site of demon-dog ‘Black Shuck’s first appearance in 1577, it also holds a far older mysterious feature within its grounds.

Known as ‘the Devil’s Stone’, ‘the Druid’s Stone’, or even ‘the Giant’s Grave’, this hefty old stone has existed in Bungay for millennia.  The stone is visually unremarkable – no carvings, no mystical spirals or portals to other worlds, just a few cracks, divots and a lot of lichen. However, that never stopped it from being a folkloric magnet.

This piece of glacial granite has been attributed to many purposes and many sites too; one theory is that the stone was removed from the nearby ruined castle and re-instated in the churchyard as a kind of makeshift grave marker. In the 1920s, the stone was regarded as a ‘fallen monolith’ and was re-set a few years later, but there are no historical or archaeological documents that shine any light on the mysterious stone’s true purpose – was it a revered monolith, or simply a convenient big rock?

Some folklorists have suggested that the stone was placed on a ley line, or signalling an important and mystical direction towards which locals could focus their rituals. Yet tradition has a rather more whimsical tale, and one that you can try out yourself. Variations on the legendary tale relate to either women or children, so if you don’t fit into that camp, I’m afraid you need to find tour own mystical rock.

One story tells how women had to hold a question in their minds before dancing around the stone, or knocking on it, and then press their ear to its surface. Only then would a voice emerge, telling them the answer to their question. One would presume questions were more along the lines of ‘Who will I marry?’ rather than, ‘What’s the capital of Portugal?).

Another variation for children says that – on a non-specific certain day of the year –  if they dance around the stone several times, they may hear a voice from the stone, or more likely, they will summon the devil himself, who will appear before them. To what end? That’s not clear, but what’s a little satanic purpose between friends?

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