N.B. THIS STONE IS NOW AT THE Mc MANUS GALLERIES, DUNDEE.

This is s very rough stone with incised decoration. In the manner of Class I Stones, the designs are cut directly into the native rock, with no attempt to dress it. Although it is relatively small, it has a solid chunky feel to it from the front, and must have been even more so before part of it split off- see side view.
It is now in the McManus Galleries (previously Dundee Museum) but before that, it was recorded as being built into a farm wall. Finding that out was helpful to me, since I was wondering what the purpose of the socket holes in the top and side could be. If it had been part of a wall, then the holes might have been for metal-work for a gate, or fencing of some sort.
ECMS describes it as standing in a field "SE of Strathmartine Castle and between it and Gallow Hill". They don't mention the wall, so it is either an oversight, or the wall was built after the stone was first recorded. They also describe it as whinstone, but it is definitely sandstone. Whinstone is heavy, dark, dense metamorphic stone such as the dark gray-to-black stuff they use for bottoming on roads, or grinding down into that unattractive (but wonderfully durable) industrial gravel. If the Picts had had the technology to inscribe whinstone, then every one of their carvings would still be as fresh as the day it was done. And probably the same shape they wanted it, too - not broken or casually sheared into lintels etc.

The Stone.

The Dolphin is neatly carved, with body scrolling well proportioned, but the Crescent-and-V-rod is somewhat indifferent, as if the carver was more used to to cutting the Dolphin, or he had a template to carefully draw the beast, but he free-handed the Crescent. Note that the LH swirl in the Crescent is higher and narrower than the RH.

Any comments on topography, history etc relating to the Tealing Stone and St Martin's Stone are equally vaild here, since they are within a few miles of one another, on the South-facing slopes of the Sidlaws.
In the passing, it might be worth mentioning the belief that the Sidlaws derive their name from Sidhe Laws - Scots Gaelic for
"The Fairy Hills". Now I have no idea whether it refers to a superstition that fairies haunted the place, or whether a very small race of people inhabited them,and the notion arose there, but I do know that among the working-class people of Dundee, the hills were known as the "Seedlies", which is close to the Gaelic pronunciation. I also know that younger people, more Anglicized than their parents and grandparents, call them the Sidlaws, pronounced as in Sidney.
Anyway, the point is, these low hills must have had special significance to be thus named. Or was it just one in particular, and the name has been used to label the whole range? People call them the Sidlaw Hills, which strictly speaking is calling them the Fairy Hill Hills, just as they talk about the Law Hill in Dundee, which is the Hill Hill.
Understanding the Past is not just a case of thinking that everything was just as it is today, except further back. The people may have been very similar, but their problems were different, and their ways of coping with them were different. Their take on the World was different, too. From our very materialistic Times, can we hope to understand what these curious markings they left behind actually mean?
Even if they were only badges for families or individuals, what do they signify? Obviously they were meant to be taken seriously. Nobody makes up a family crest "Thicko" or "Depraved, Incontinent Slut", or "The King of Gonorrhoea". True, other people might see it that way, but the originators want respect for it. They didn't make up weird beasts to be laughed at. There was a potency behind them that we have forgotten. Why do we feel we would like to know?
I'm in danger of being drawn into the paranormal here, so I shall end with the observation that the three main stones mentioned above all have Dolphins on them, and so some of the other fragments found in this area.