Hello Mr H:
Lifted entirely from Grinsell's "Folklore of Prehistoric Sites in Britain" (1976 David & Charles). Typos are mine though.
The tradition of human beings turned into stone for misdemeanour is associated with more than a dozen stone circles, nearly all free-standing; one stone row (St Columb Major, Cornwall); one ruined wall resembling a stone row (Howman Shearers, Roxburghshire); several standing stones; and one chamber tomb (Tinkinswood, Mid Glamorgan).
The punishment of petrifaction was usually meted out for dancing on the Sabbath or Sunday - not necessarily the same - notably at the Merry Maidens and Nine Maidens (Cornwall); the Nine Stones (Devon); Stanton Drew (Avon); Clachan Gorach (Ross and Cromarty); and Tinkinswood (Glamorgan). At Haltadans (Shetland) it was for dancing through the night into sunrise; at Greflabbas Knowe in the same group of islands it was for peering uninvited at festivities in a knowe; and at Callanish (Lewis and Harris) it was for refusing to accept Christianity. The Duddo Stones (Northumberland), Howman Shearers (Roxburghshire), and the Moelfre standing stones (Caernarfon) were all country-folk turned into stone for working in the fields on the Sabbath. The Stones of the Black Hags (Leac nan Cailleacha Dubha), North Uist, are women turned into stone for milking cows which did not belong to them; an dthe False Men (Na Fir Bhreige) on the same island are three men of Skye punished for deserting their wives.
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At the Merry Maidens (Cornwall) the musicians accelerated their playing, causing the dancers to quicken their pace until they became petrified with exhaustion. At Stanton Drew (Avon), the place of the fiddler was taken after midnight by the Devil, with the same result.
Nearly all of these legends therefore take the form of divine judgements for profaning the Lord's Day or for other wrong-doing. At least two of them (the Hurlers and Stanton Drew) date from the seventeenth century or earlier, a period when the theme of divine judgements for Sabbath-breaking or other misdemeanours was very popular, though it continued until the eighteenth century. There seems little doubt that pulpit oratory from the seventeenth century onwards played a major part in producing these legends.
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