Peter Martin

Upon deciding to try your hand at lifting the Scottish historic lifting stones, it will not be long before you come across the name Peter Martin, that is a guarantee, and furthermore it won't be long before you are lifting a stone that is a direct result of the research of said Peter Martin, that is also a guarantee.

The truth of the matter is we in the Scottish stonelifting community owe a debt to Peter that can never be paid because without him (and a couple of others) we wouldn't have the knowledge of over 100 stones he researched and we certainly wouldn't have the 30% of them that are currently available for lifting, in effect we would be lifting The dinnie stones and the Inver stone and that's about it.

I personally never got to meet Peter as I lifted my first stone (The Dalwhinnie stone) years after his passing, which does sadden me however I feel his influence every time I'm out on the stones and that's not lost on me, I do however wish I could have met him, particularly for two reasons

1. To see what he would actually think of the explosion of Stonelifting in modern day and where he thinks it should go from here?
2. To tap into his knowledge of locations and names of lost stones so that I could continue to hunt these stones down

I've read just about everything I can find online written by Peter with ref the historic stones and there's always one thing that gets to me especially since someone must have the answer! What happened to Peters written works and noted after he died? And in particular what happened to the second half of Peters book (the most important part) "The twixt the stone and the turf"?

I feel that if we as a community had the answers to these questions then we would be in a much better position to find more "lost" stones. I feel strongly that if these notes and writings were to become publicly available then the chances of more stone finds would be much higher as more knowledge would be available. I think this could be a huge thing for Scottish stonelifting as research at the minute is very thin and hardly taking place at all, although some of this is clearly due to the lack of written text from Scottish history due to things like the Highland clearances and the fall of the clan system, we are unfortunate as a nation that we were very poor at keeping records due in part to the turmoil of our early years as a country and in particular the wars of independence, however, with Peters notes we would at least have a starting point and with 100 plus named stones at the very least we could go and visit places with the stones named and see what can be found.

I guess what we are needing currently in Scotland is another strength historian like Peter who has the knowledge and skillset to take on his work, unfortunately I don't know if such as person exists and people have said to me but I know my limits, I'm a lifter and not an academic, I wouldn't know how to research and where to look, I consider myself to be good whilst out in the field actually physically searching but not sitting endlessly reading as its not something I could do effectively, however I'm forever hopeful someone will come to the fore especially with the meteoric rise in popularity of Scottish Stonelifting.

There has only been a handful of stone finds by others since Peters passing a few years ago, stones like The Monachyle and Clach Altruman Mhor and Beag (found by myself), Clach Neirt Mheirichard (Calum Maclean) and The lifting stone of Invergarry (Stuart Whyte), and although very encouraging and welcome additions to the stones map I can't help but feel that there are many other stone treasures waiting to be rediscovered, at the end of the day stones don't just get up and move themselves, they are still there with just the knowledge of them that is sadly lost for the moment at least, we have to remain forever hopeful that more discoveries can and will be made.

One last point is I do wonder if Peter would approve of the current trend of placing and lifting of "modern" stones throughout Scotland to enhance the Stonelifting experience and help give it longevity moving forward, ultimately we will never know but my mind wanders sometimes.

Thank you Peter for everything RIP 🙏

Jamie Gorrian