Historic landmark near Milngavie inspires song by Bear's Den

The rock formation, known as Auld Wives’ Lifts, is near the home of singer Andrew Davie’s grandparents.

The Lifts, which could possibly be a druid altar, are on Craigmaddie Muir, north of Milngavie.

In a recent online interview Andrew, said: “No one knows how they got there, and there are faces carved into the rocks. There’s all sorts of folk tales around them.”

Whatever the Lifts origins, the favourite explanation among locals is the legend which claims that three old women from Campsie, Strathblane and Baldernock, having laid a wager which could carry the greatest burden, brought, in their aprons, the three stones and laid them in position.

Singer and lyricist Andrew Davie has never been one to shy away from tackling difficult subjects in his songwriting.

The songs on the band’s debut album ‘Islands’ dealt with platonic love and illusions of afterlife to strained parent-child relationships and bitter romantic break-ups. In ‘Auld Wives’, Andrew picks up where he left off, with a song about the heartbreaking process of slowly losing a loved one (his grandfather) to dementia.

Andrew said: “My grandfather developed Alzheimer’s in his old age.

“Knowing someone, and them not knowing you any more, is a difficult thing to go through. Auld Wives became this way of talking about it, of venting about that feeling.”

‘Auld Wives’ is the first single from Bear’s Den’s forthcoming second album ‘Red Earth & Pouring Rain’, due out on July 22 via Communion/Caroline International.