In the immediate area there is also a street of circular pits 8 to 10 feet (2.4 to 3.0 m) deep which may have formed the shelters of the people who set up the circles, although this is not certain.

According to legend, William II de Soules, who was lord of Hermitage Castle, was arrested and boiled alive by his tenants at the site in 1320 in a cauldron suspended from the two large stones, on account of being a particularly oppressive and cruel landlord.

[12] In John Leyden's ballad Lord Soulis, William's mastery of the black arts (provided by his redcap familiar spirit and also learned from Michael Scot) was such that rope could not hold him, nor steel harm him, so (after True Thomas, who was present, had tried and failed to make magical ropes of sand) he was wrapped in a sheet of lead and boiled.

The spreat and the deer-hair ne'er shall grow.However, William II de Soules was not actually boiled alive but died in prison in Dumbarton Castle, probably sometime before 20 April 1321 (and Leyden's kettle was actually a relic of the Old Pretender's rebel army of 1715, according to Walter Scott).

[17] It is believed that an earlier ancestor Ranulf II de Soules was killed in his teens by his servants in 1207 or 1208, on grounds of general vileness and wickedness;[18][unreliable source?