Folklorist Leslie Grinsell believed that it only adopted the name "Countless Stones" following the monument's pillaging circa 1690. The folktale held that an Aylesford baker attempted to count the stones by placing a loaf on each of the stones, but one loaf disappeared, with the Devil appearing in its place. At the end, the baker tried to count the loaves, but found that he had one more than he had brought with him. As he was about to call out the number of the stones, he then fell dead. In 1976, Grinsell noted that this folkloric belief still survived, as evidenced by numbers chalked on to the stones.