The Gogar Stane : Places in Ancient Lothian

► a cuckoo tale about vikings

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The Gogar Stane is a single standing stone in the middle of a crop field on the west side of the Gogar area, south of Edinburgh Airport.

Looking Towards Platt Hill & The Pentlands

There are no sources which indicate that the Gogar Stane was ever part of a circle, and certainly, a short distance to the North, another isolated stone, The Catstane, can be found. However, it is within the wider vicinity of Tormain, Platt Hill, Huly Hill and The Catstane, and may well have formed one component of a larger local network of ritual sites.

The name of Gogar appears to present several etymological possibilities, and most authorities are in disagreement. According to W.J. Watson, the Brythonic elements present are Old Welsh guo- for "under" and -cor as in modern Bangor. Hence, Guocor would yield "a small setting or cast" - The Celtic Placenames of Scotland (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 1986), p.210. Alternatively, John Garth Wilkinson offers no less than four different, yet equally Brythonic readings: (1) cocarra for "red stream"; (2) coch ar for "red land"; (3) gogarth for "hill, slope, terrace"; (4) cog for cuckoo, not least since at nearby Bathgate, were a Gowkstane and a Gogstane - West Lothian Place Names (Harburn: Torphin House, 1992), p.17 (gowk being Scots for cuckoo, possibly derived from Brythonic, although it could just as easily be derived from Middle English gawk or Old Norse gaukr).

The Gogar Stane's own Crop Circle?

It would seem, therefore, that the cuckoo may have been of some ritual significance in the area in pagan times, although whether or not the Gogar Stane has any connection with it is now lost in an etymological black hole.

The Gogar Burn, at Dalmahoy

Nearby the Gogar Stane runs the Gogar Burn, which starts several miles to the west, passing through Dalmahoy and moving on to its termination in the River Almond by The Catstane.

One piece of local lore associates it with the burial of a Viking chieftain, with a battle which allegedly took place at Hanley, to the East of the stone. As James Clason put it, in his entry for Ratho in The New Statistical Account of Scotland (1834-45):

We know from the remains of bodies found in the plains to the North [of Ratho], about Newbridge and Gogar Camp, (Henley), that these fields were the scene of not a few severe struggles, generally supposed to have been with the Norwegians; and this rising-ground may not improbably have been seized by them as a place of some strength, on their advance into the country after these engagements. This supposition is rendered all the more likely as the coffins found in Gogar Camp and on the Platt hill were of similar construction, and in both cases resembled those found at Largs, in Ayrshire, where it is historically known that the Norsemen buried their dead, slain in an unsuccessful engagement with the Scots under Alexander III.[1]

However, the stone probably significantly predates any possible Viking origin or even the Brythonic Celtic kingdom of Gododdin which flourished from the beginning of the historical period up to the Anglian conquest around 638AD. On the other hand, one first millennium artifact discovered nearby at Gogarburn and now in the National Museum of Scotland, is a Finnish brooch:

Finnish Brooch, Gogarburn

Presumably this brooch is indeed of Viking origin, perhaps connected with the handful of Viking remains in the area, such as the Christian period hogback burial stones at both Abercorn and Inchcolm in the Firth of Forth. However, nothing can be proven with regard to any direct Viking association with the Gogar Stane.

Footnotes

[1] James Clason, "Parish of Ratho", in The New Statistical Account of Scotland (Edinburgh: Creech, 1834-45), pp.90-91.

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