THE CORONATION STONE

New Zealand Tablet, 15 June 1911, Page 1095

THE CORONATION STONE

THE LIA FAIL, OR STONE OF DESTINY . At the striking pageantry, which will be witnessed on Thursday, June 22, _ King George V., will sit in the curious old Coronation Chair that is still preserved iin Westminster Abbey. Beneath this ; chair• lies a: roughly-shaped block ,of stone which is supposed to be , identical . with the. Lia Fail, or Stone of Destiny; which,: according to ancient tradition, was brought to Ireland by the Tuath De-Danaans, and upon which the A rd-Righs, or High-Kings of Erin were inaugurated in Erin in subsequent times at Tara. It is composed of the dark, hard, close-grained Syennite stone — named from Syena, in Upper Egypt, where it abounds —and is about three feet and a-quarter long, two and a-half broad, and one and a-half thick. * It is * one of the' most curious historic relics in the British Isles. A long line of Irish, Scottish, and English-monarchs have been crowned upon it. With one exception £ every sovereign, of,; England has been crowned upon- it since the days of Edward 11., with the sole exception of Queen —daughter of Henry VIII. and Catherine of Arragon. . And she, in order to secure her right of succession, had to be crowned in hot haste, and without the usual formalities, for was not Lady Jane Grey in the field, supported by numbers of disaffected nobles? A few. further words regarding the story of this historical object cannot fail to interest our readers at the present juncture. - • The Lia Fail or 'Stone of Destiny is said to have' been used at the coronation of Irish Kings long before the Christian era. Strange myths circled round the stone. For instance, it was stated that it groaned or gave out a sound when the lawful king stood upon it, but was as silent as the grave when the candidate for royal honors was not the rightful king—was* not in the line of - succession to . the throne. . In the far past —so the story runneth Feco Fioun was inaugurated upon it king of Ireland. But the stone wks mute. Whereupon Cuehullin struck it rudely,, perhaps in anger, and it is said that from that hour is gave forth no sound until the day when Conn of the Hundred Battles was crowned upon it the lawful king of Erin. ’ The ancient story of the Bade an Scail ’ in O’Gurry’s lectures tells how, at sunrise one morning Conn, with his three druids and his three poets, was out upon the .royal rath or mound of Tara. He happened to stand upon a stone, which forthwith screamed under his feet, so that it was heard all over Tara. Conn asked the druid to explain the cry and its meaning. The druid took three and fifty days to reply. At the end of that period he told Conn that it was the Lia Fail, that its scream was a prophecy, and that the number of calls given by it indicated the number of kings of his race that should reign in green Eire of the streams. The last ‘ feis ’ or convention of the States of Ireland as held in Tara in the year 554, Soon afterwards a malediction was pronounced upon the palace by St. Rodanus, of Lothra, in the present county of Tipperary, in punishment for the violation of the Saint’s sanctuary by the king. The royal hill was deserted and was soon overgrown with grass and weeds. No subsequent Irish king resided there, and each selected his abode according to the dynasty to which he belonged. ' In the meantime An Irish Colony . from Antrim had secured a good grip on a portion of western Scotland, having battled with almost unbroken success with the Piets there from about the year 503-506 without much aid from their kin beyond the North Channel. At one time, however, the Piets got the upper hand in the long-drawn struggle, and drove the Irish Dalriads out of the country. But the defeated invaders gathered. together a stronger force, swept across the narrow sea in their long galleys, under the leadership of Loam, Aengus, and Fergus the . three sons of Ere —invaded Alba once more, subjugated the Piets, and established the Scottish monarchy. Things went gaily enough for the new transmarine Irish colony until the sixth century was drawing near to its third quarter. Then Aedh (or Hugh), son of Ainmire, came, to the throne as high-king of Ireland. In 573 he summoned the great convention of. Drumceat (in Roe Park, near Newtown Limavaddy, in the present county of Derry)—the first meeting of the States of Ireland that had. been held since the abandonment of Tara. One of the questions to be settled at the convention was the relations between the Scottish colonies of Alba and the mother-country. ~ The Irish monarch desired to impose tribute on the colony. St. Columcille — was the founder of lona and a member of the royal race of Ulster—attended the convention, accomfianied by a number of bishops and monks, and by his riend Aidan (or Hugh), who was king of the colony beyond : the water. St. Columcille saw in the exaction of tribute the . prospect of endless wars and bloodshed between the two countries, and wiser than the advisers of the Third George of England— prevailed upon the king of Ireland to abandon his claims against Alba, thus establishing the independence of the Scottish colony and severing it permanently from the mother country.

I & But St.lColumcille did more than this. According to the common account. he secured from the King of Ireland the loan of'the Lia F ail to give an added-glory’ and security to the coronation of .the kings of the young colony beyond the sea. -It. was ' ,V Brought to Scotland , . ' Xby him and Hugh. A very ancient Irish quatrain speaks' of the stone as follows: - • ‘ Cineadh saor an fhine Mun budh breag an thatsdine Mar a fflughid an Liah Fail Dlighid flaitheas do ghabhaill.’ Hector Boetius condensed this into the following Latin couplet: /i : 1, " ‘ Ni fallat fatum, Scoti, quocumque locatum Invenientlapidem hunc, regnum tenebunt ibidem. - Which, in English dress, runneth thus: ‘lf fate’s decrees be not announced in vain, Where’er this stone is found, the Scots shall reign.’ So the legend ran. And hence the desire of the kings of the Irish colony in Scotland to be crowned upon the Lia Fail. Fergus seems to have been the first crowned upon it on Scottish soil. The borrowers forgot to return the great Irish heirloom, and it remained at their royal residence at Dunstaffnage, in north-west Argyle, till about the year 850, when Kenneth MacAlpino swooped upon and finally conquered the Piets and became the first king of all Scotland. Then the Stone of Destiny was removed to the monastery of . Scone, in Perthshire till the year 1296, when Edward L. King of England, carried it away and deposited it 3-;’ U In Westminster Abbey, ■*■■■■■: where it is to be seen to this'day. Haverty and others quite disagree with the opinion of Dr.' Petrie that the Lia Fail is the present pillar stone which stands over the’’ Croppies’ Grave’ on one of the great raths or mounds of Tara; and it seems clearly established that this curious relic of ancient'. Irish political life was transferred to Scotland, and thence to Westminster Abbey. ... ; J The old prophecy has been fulfilled in a curious way, for,, says Haverty, ‘it is remarkable that the present reigning family of’England' owes its right to the throne to its descent, through the Stuart family, from ■ those Irish Dalriads.’ In 1314, after Robert Bruce and his gallant 30,000 men had inflicted such a decisive defeat on ; the British arms, a peace followed and a demand was made for restitution of the regalia of Scotland. But the Londoners would not give up the stone. They knew the old propheev, and exclaimed: ‘We will fight for the stone; the safety of our kingdom depends upon it.’ And so the Lia, Fail remained in Westminster,