MacCulloch compared the custom to Scandinavian sailors who saluted the tall stacks at the ends of their headlands and threw food, old clothes or spirits into the sea as they passed, and he thought it had survived in Guernsey "notwithstanding that a thousand years or more have elapsed since the Northmen first invaded these shores". Boats passing Lihou lowered their topmasts in the same way, supposedly out of respect for Our Lady.
Two legends explained the rock. J. Linwood Pitts collected one in which Andriou was a man searching for treasure among the stacks, turned to stone by the treasure's guardian spirit. Isaac Le Patourel and others told Carey the other. Andriou was the last Arch-Druid of the island, who refused to accept Christianity and lived in a cave on Jerbourg Point, watching the sea from the stacks. During a great gale he saw a ship being driven onto the rocks. He prayed to his own gods and nothing happened. In desperation he prayed to the Christian God and vowed to build a chapel to the Virgin if the ship were saved. The storm dropped and the ship reached harbour. He was baptised and built the chapel, which some said was the one on Lihou and others the vanished chapel on the Fief Blanchelande at St Martin's.
"That little figure standing, looking out to sea, petrified there that he may yet bring good luck and fine weather to his beloved sailors" was, Carey wrote, still regarded by them "with fond reverence". The stacks are best seen from the cliff path at Jerbourg or from the sea, and the map point is approximate.
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