The Countless Stones legend belongs to a genuinely widespread folk motif attached to megalithic monuments across Britain, the belief that certain ancient stone arrangements actively resist being counted, with each fresh attempt yielding a different total or being interrupted before completion. Up until relatively recent generations, a broader popular belief held that such monuments could not be reliably measured or counted at all, a folk conviction that turned ordinary archaeological curiosity into something closer to a doomed ritual challenge.
The story's most memorable version involves a baker clever enough to devise an ingenious counting method, placing a single bread roll atop each stone with the intention of returning afterward to gather them up and arrive at an exact total simply by counting the rolls instead of the stones themselves, a workaround that should, in principle, have easily defeated whatever force made direct counting impossible. His cleverness proved insufficient. The Devil himself intervened, eating some of the rolls before the baker could complete his collection, then sitting and gibbering, mocking the baker's discomfort at having his clever trick undone.
Variant tellings elaborate the Devil's specific method of sabotage differently, in some he adds an extra loaf unnoticed, throwing off the final count in the opposite direction, in others he disguises himself entirely as one of the loaves, hiding in plain sight among the baker's own counting method. A further, darker variant dispenses with the baker entirely and has an unnamed counter drop dead at the exact moment just before he could shout out the correct final number, the curse claiming not merely the accuracy of the count but the life of whoever came closest to actually completing it. Whatever version is told, the underlying folk logic remains constant: Little Kit's Coty House's true number of stones is not meant to be known, and the attempt itself carries real, if variously described, consequences for anyone determined enough to try.
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