The Coffin Stone

The popular version goes like this: somewhere near Dartmeet, there is a stone known as the Coffin Stone. The tale attached to it varies depending on who is telling it. Some say it marks the spot where a coffin was laid to rest during a funeral procession; others claim it is an omen stone, and that seeing it signals a death in the family, or warns of a corpse passing nearby. It is the kind of legend that feels like it ought to have deep roots, and it circulates readily enough online and in walking guides.

The trouble is, the written trail is surprisingly thin. The most recent account I can point to is in "Legendary Dartmoor" (in-copyright), which records the tale but does not claim to date it to any older source. I have not found it in nineteenth-century antiquarian collections or in the early folklore journals. That does not mean it is recent; it means I do not know. Legends about stones and death omens are common enough on the moor, and this one may simply never have been written down by anyone who thought it worth publishing. Or it may be a twentieth-century invention that caught on locally. Without older documentation, I cannot say which.