Bell Craig
Bell Craig DNO R NO540108 1 85m
Bel-craig 1876 Rogers 1876, 46 [reporting his childhood excavation of the rock and its ‘tubulated hollow’]
Bell Craig 1888 x 1914 OS 6 inch County Series, 1st revision
Sc or SSE bell + Sc craig
‘Bell-shaped crag or rock’. The name, in spite of a history of local romantic conjecture, has nothing to do with Baal, an ancient deity of the eastern Mediterranean, who was thought by some writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to have been worshipped by druids in the area.[133] It is also known locally as Belstane, meaning the same as Bell Craig,[134] and gives its name to Belstane Cottages at NO538109 (formerly Windywalls 1828 SGF, probably ‘windy wells’). The stone or crag is bell-shaped. Bell Rock FAL (q.v.) may also be so called for the same reason, despite a local tradition that the church-bell for neighbouring Kilgour Kirk sat on it. For G names with the same meaning, see Craiglog KCQ, and Elements Glossary PNF 5 under clag.
It is not named on OS 6 inch 1st edn, but appears on the first revision of that map, and is still shown on OS 1:10,000 digital map (2006).
This place-name appeared in printed volume 3