The Stane is a glacial erratic of Old Red Sandstone, carved out in the 3rd millennium BC, with a central passage, two chambers, and a stone bed with a pillow. The marks of antler and stone tools are still on the roof.
The giant story is the local explanation of the great stone and its stone door. The couple are trapped and the husband smashes his way out through the roof.
Sir Walter Scott wrote about the Stane and, in his novel The Pirate, made it the home of the dwarf Trolld of the northern sagas, whose shape could be seen at sunrise and sunset. That is Scott's literary use and not local belief, so it is not treated as folklore here. Scott also described it as hewn by no earthly hand.
The geologist Hugh Miller spent a night in it in 1846 and the Cumbrian solicitor Major William Mounsey left a carved inscription saying he had sat two nights and learnt patience.
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