A short distance from the Rollright Stones can be found the Whispering Knights, a group of five mighty stones huddled together within a protective ring of spiked iron railings. Irregular and eroded, they appear almost drunken, with one seemingly having toppled over. Whereas they may not be as visually arresting as the more famous circle of stones that stands nearby, they are no less richly endowed with folklore.
Legend has it that the stones are a group of petrified knights turned to stone by the local witch for having betrayed their king. And yet despite their apparent immobility, the story goes that on occasion they uproot themselves to venture down into the neighbouring valley to take a drink from the brook. New Year’s Day is most commonly cited as being the date upon which they undertake this unlikely peregrination, although it is said that they will also be prompted to make this trip should they catch the peel of the bells of the Church of St Peter and St Paul in nearby Long Compton. Another tale recalls the alleged misfortunes of a local farmer who took it into his head to remove one of the stones to help build a barn. Whether anyone had hitherto tried to use any of their number for such a purpose the story does not say, although it would seem that this was so, for all of his neighbours warned him against his proposed course of action. Undeterred he harnessed a team of his three strongest oxen, and with their aid dragged it onto a cart which they pulled back to the farm. So great was its weight, that upon entering the farmyard all three promptly dropped dead, exhausted by their exertions; the cart too gave way, and was smashed to pieces. Taking no heed of such ill portents, the farmer saw to it that the stone was brought to the barn and set into its wall, but from that point onwards his luck changed, his erstwhile prosperity waning to such an extent that he was brought close to ruin. This downturn in his fortunes led him to mortgage his property and sell all of his livestock but for a single worn-out old nag. In a fit of desperation he finally realised the source of his misfortune: the stone. Levering it from the wall he placed it on his rickety cart, and somehow managed to induce the horse to pull it back up the hill where the ‘knight’ was dropped back into its hole. From that moment onwards his fortunes are said to have changed for the better, and that which he had lost he soon regained.
There is, of course, a more prosaic explanation relating to the creation of the ‘Whispering Knights’, with the stones being the remains of a burial chamber dating from the early Neolithic (circa 4000-3500 BC). Alas, the capstone of this ‘portal dolmen’ has long since fallen, and much of the original structure disappeared, leaving the array of stones that we see today.
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