According to local legend, Dunmail, king of Cumbria, was attacked by the combined forces of Edmund and Malcolm and retreated into the heart of the Lake District.
Dunmail met the kings in battle in the pass that divides Grasmere from Thirlmere but was defeated, was killed in the fight (it is said at the hands of Edmund himself) and his sons were subsequently blinded by the victors.
There they strike the cairn with their spears and a voice is heard from deep inside the stones, saying "Not yet, not yet; wait awhile, my warriors.
"[1] Dunmail features as a character (and his death is described) in the classic story of the Vikings in Lakeland Thorstein of the Mere by W. G. Collingwood.
At an earlier date, the story was versified by William Wordsworth: As far as written history is concerned, the name of the "Dunbalrasse stones" is recorded in a map of the 1570s,[2] and the association of the cairn with the king is recorded as early as the seventeenth century, when John Ogilby wrote that "Dunmail-Raise-Stones" were erected by a Cumbrian ruler of that name to mark the frontier of his kingdom.