The Pech Stane or stone is an enormous boulder near Billie Mains. It features in an old rhyme collected by George Henderson (1800-1864) in the early 1800s for his book ‘The Popular Rhymes, Sayings and Proverbs and Sayings of the County of Berwick’ (1854). Henderson claims to have heard the rhyme as a child from an old man, called David Donaldson, who possessed a rich collection of old sayings, songs, rhymes, tales and proverbs, which were never heard anywhere else.
Grisly DRŒDAN sat alane By the cairn and PECH stane; Billy, wi' a seg (or kent) sae stout, Cries - I'll turn grisly DRŒDAN out!‚ DRŒDAN leuch, and stalk'd awa, And vanish'd in a babbanqua'.
The Pech stone has been described as ‘The Altar’ suggesting some historic connection with ceremony. A ‘babbanqua’ is a quagmire or very boggy area of ground. George Henderson noted that the cairn was, ‘not far from the Pech Stone’, and was surrounded by a circle of stones so ‘may have been a place of worship for ancient druids’.