Kit’s Coty House

senua says:

Re: Kit’s Coty House
The Countless Stones or Little Kits Coty, another very damaged neolithic tomb, is situated nearby.  It is said to be impossible to count the stones.

The Kits Coty Morris men dance at Kits Coty at dawn on May Day morning.

Kits Coty is also used by local Pagan groups at various times of the year.

Some Legends/Folklore about Kits Coty:

"It is a persistent tradition that if a personal object is placed upon the capstone, and the donor thereof walks around the monument three times, then the object will disappear; this ritual must be carried out on the night of the full moon. Interested persons have carried out this ritual at intervals right up to this year when the activities of a local investigator were fully reported in the local press.

The insistence that a personal object must be used suggests a substitute sacrifice by which the worshipper buys his own immunity from the Otherworld powers, or, possibly, that the received gift is a reward for favours granted or to be granted, although there is no hint that the ritualist must make a wish when making the circuit.

Another curious story is that if a person climbs on to the capstone, again at full moon, and thrusts his hand into a natural cavity in the stone, he will withdraw five iron nails. The five iron nails (without doubt for a horseshoe) will irrisistably remind readers of the legend attached to Wayland the Smith’s Forge, in Berkshire, which is the ruined dolmen of a Long Barrow like Kits Coty House. The story attached to this megalith is that if a traveller places coins upon the capstone he will have his horse shod by an invisible smith. Bearing this story in mind there is thus the further possibility as regards the Kits Coty rituals that they have become confused and separated, and that the object which disappears is really payment for the nails.

From ‘Notes on the Folklore and Legends Associated with the Kentish Megaliths, by John H. Evans, in Folklore, Vol. 57, No. 1. (Mar., 1946), p. 39. "

"..the building of Kits Coty House is attributed to the magical work of three witches who lived on Blue Bell Hill. Having raised the huge wall-stones, they found themselves unable to lift the capstones, and had to call in the assistance of a fourth member of the sisterhood, by whose help they were enabled to raise the immense stone into the air and lower it gently upon its walls.

From ‘Notes on the Folklore and Legends Associated with the Kentish Megaliths, by John H. Evans, in Folklore, Vol. 57, No. 1. (Mar., 1946), p. 39. "

"A somewhat similar story [to that at the Countless Stones] is that Kits Coty House cannot be measured for as fast as the imprudent surveyor takes his measurements he is made to forget them even before he can commit them to paper.

From ‘Notes on the Folklore and Legends Associated with the Kentish Megaliths, by John H. Evans, in Folklore, Vol. 57, No. 1. (Mar., 1946), p. 39. "

"— On visiting Kit’s Coty House near Maidstone, Kent, a few months ago, I was informed, by a person who apparently knew something of the country round about, of the following common belief by the rustics of the district. It is said by them that a pool of water contained in a hollow on the top of the capstone never dries up, not even in the hottest weather, when it might reasonably be supposed to soon evaporate.

Notes and Queries by EHW Dunkin, January 8th, 1870.2"

"A belief was current in the neighbourhood of these stones—say in Rochester, &c. — some forty-two years ago, that there was on Kit’s covering stone a basin of water that, ladle it out as you would, could never be emptied. Two of us, curious boys, mounted the flat roof and found, not one basin, but two, or one cavity divided by a septum.

Commencing on Baconian principles, we carefully examined these, and the murder soon seemed out. The septum had a communicating hole below, and our minds were satisfied with the theory that, not caring to take the trouble of throwing the water over the stone, some one had ladled it from one basin into the other, with the result, of course, of everything remaining in status quo.

Notes and Queries July 26th 1879"