High up on an outlying spur of the Cotswold hills, where Warwickshire and Oxfordshire meet, there is a sort of miniature Stonehenge, known as the Rollright Stones; and the Story they tell about them is that they were once a king and his courtiers who, by evil spells, were changed suddenly into Stone.
The Rollrights are scattered about the hill top, seven hundred feet above sea-level, a mile or so from the quiet village of Little Compton. And this is the old Story of how they came there.
Ever so long ago there came marching over the hills a king and his army bent upon the conquest of England. As they neared the summit of the hill the king was met by a witch who told him that he had nearly achieved his desire. She spoke in rhyme, and her words are remembered in the neighbourhood even now.
“If Long Compton you can see,
King of England you shall be,”
she said. The king rushed forward, but, owing to treachery on the part of some of his men, his view of Long Compton, which lies in the valley below, was impeded.
Then the witch turned to him with a croaking laugh, and muttered:
“As Long Compton you can’t see
King of England you shan’t be.