THE STONE OF DESTINY.

[Colburn's "New Monthly Magazine," February, 1857.]

THE time-honoured coronation-stone inclosed within Saint Edward's chair, in Westminster Abbey, is one of the most remarkable of our historical monuments, and the belief connected with it is one of the curiosities of British history. The known pedigree of the stone carries it back for nearly a thousand years, and tradition surrounds it with a haze of mystery and legend, and refers its origin to a most remote antiquity.

The stone upon which the patriarch Jacob rested his head at Bethel, and which he afterwards set up for a monument, as described in the twenty-eighth chapter of the book of Genesis, has been regarded as the prototype of the stone monuments which were erected by the most ancient nations in the world, either for purposes of memorial or for national solemnities. Many passages of holy scripture show that a stone monument was dedicated to the anointing of kings; and from the East the custom was adopted by Celtic and Scandinavian nations. The ancient coronationstone of Anglo-Saxon kings, which is preserved at Kingstonupon-Thames; the Meini Gwyr, upon which proclamations are made in the market-place of St. Austell; and some similar monuments that might be mentioned, are examples of the descent of that custom to our own country. But the mediæval legends and popular belief connected with the coronation-stone in Westminster Abbey, assert that national relic to be Jacob's Pillar itself; and the patriotic romances of some old Scotish chroniclers represent this stone to have come to Europe through the Phœnician colonisation of Spain, and to have been thence derived by

Ireland with the first of her Ibero-Celtic monarchs, and from them to have come to Caledonia.

To seek an historical foundation for a legend of this nature would be to embark upon an ocean of uncertainty in the mists of tradition; but it may be interesting to see how far the existence of this national relic, and of the curious belief connected with it, is carried back by authentic history. And here it may be observed, that the fact of the south-western coasts of Ireland and those of Spain having been colonised at a remote period by a cognate race of Eastern origin; the fact of Phoenicians, if not Jews, having anciently settled in those parts of Europe; and the fact of the stone in question corresponding mineralogically to a sienite found in Egypt, are facts which, as far as they go, afford some countenance to the legend connected with it.

But if we turn to existing traditions in the East, we find that legend to be in conflict with them; for Jacob's Pillar-which is said to have been removed from Bethel by the tribe of Josephis believed by the Mahometans (according to Calmet) to be preserved in that ancient building which is known as the Mosque of Omar. The sacred rock covered by the dome is a celebrated object of Moslem tradition and devotion. Dr. Robinson says that the Christians of the middle ages regarded it as the stone on which Jacob slept when he saw the vision of angels, and as the stone of prophecy; and it is at this day known as Al Sakra, or the stone of unction. There is a strange belief connected with the well or hollow beneath this long-venerated rock, for there the souls of the departed are believed to rest between death and resurrection, and there it was thought the living might hold converse with the dead. But although in Eastern tradition, both Christian and Mussulman, supernatural attributes are connected with this object, it is difficult to identify it with the pillar set up by the patriarch; and in truth the European tradition of the Stone of Destiny ascends to an elder source, and avers that it— the real stone of prophecy-had left Judæa long before the destruction of Jerusalem. At all events, authentic Jewish history does not, so far as we know, connect with the sacred rock in honour of which the dome was built a prophecy or belief resembling that which is connected with the coronation- stone.

But an Irish tradition derived by us through Scotland, and which first makes its appearance in the old traditions of Ireland, avers that the rock or pillar of Jacob, to the possession of which by a certain tribe destiny annexed the sceptre of the kingdom in which it should rest, was brought from Judæa to Spain by a chieftain or patriarch who founded a kingdom there, and was taken from that country to Ireland by the king or chief of the Scoti-a very ancient people, who were undoubtedly in possession of the island at the time of the introduction of Christianity, and to whom some historians attribute a Phœnician origin. According to the legend, this conqueror-a very mythical personage, bythe-by-was contemporary with Romulus and Remus, and came to Ireland with the Stone of Destiny to found his kingdom, about the time of the foundation of Rome, or seven hundred and fifty years before Christ. It was a thousand years before, according to Biblical chronology, when the King of Kings promised to Jacob the land on which he set up the stone of Bethel, and dominion to his posterity through all the world.

Now a fatal stone, regarded as a kind of national palladium, is mentioned in Irish manuscripts of the sixth century of our era, by the name of the LIA FAIL, or Stone of Destiny; and that a stone which stood upon the Hill of Tara, and was used at the inaugu ration of the Irish kings, and was known as the Labheireg, or Stone of Destiny, existed in A.D. 560, appears from the fact that the stone and the hill itself fell in that year under the anathema of the Christian clergy; the stone (according to Sir John Ware, in his "Antiquities of Ireland") having been honoured as a kind of national palladium before the conversion of the natives, and having become a focus of heathen superstitions. A very ancient prophetical verse referring to this stone is said to exist in the old Irish language, in a manuscript of the sixth century, and is to the effect that the LIA FAIL shall accompany the sceptre of the kingdom. This prophetical verse is referred by Borlase, in his "Antiquities of Cornwall," to a Druidical origin. Be that as it may, the legends of the early Irish historians relating to this stone are of the most romantic kind, and connect it with shadowy kings of the ancient royal race of Ireland.

The old Irish prophecy connected with that stone, and the

prophecy connected in Scotish belief with the FATALE MARMOR of Scone and Westminster, to which Scotish medieval writers transfer the regal attributes of the LIA FAIL, have not the same form in the two countries; but it cannot be doubted that the Scotish tradition was derived from Ireland, and the prophecy itself looks of Oriental origin. The Persians had their Artizoe, or "Fatal Stone," which, from the notice of it given by Pliny, seems to have been a kind of ordeal stone, for it was used to point out the most deserving candidate for the throne. Then, too, there is the sacred Black Stone, which is considered by the Seids to be their palladium; and (it is curious ethnologically, as well as observable in illustration of this point, that) a tribe of Indians of South America reverenced a sacred and Fatal Stone-described as a large mass of very rich grey silver ore-which they guarded and removed as they were driven from place to place by the Spaniards, and which was the first thing that the subjugated natives stipulated to retain.† And, moreover, amongst the many stones which have long been considered sacred, there is the Caaba, the sacred character of which is held by the Mussulmans to have been proved by a miracle. It is believed to have been at one time the object of worship, and Mahomet, finding the prejudice of his countrymen too strong to overcome, transferred this remarkable object to the wall of the Temple of Mecca, and there fixed it as a sacred stone.

It does not appear at what time the race of Scoti who migrated from Ireland to the hills of Argyll first possessed the Fatal Stone that was preserved at Scone until king Edward I. removed it to Westminster. The patriotic romances of some mediæval Scottish writers-ingeniously avoiding altogether the Irish tradition of the Stone of Destiny-pretend that king Fergus, three hundred and thirty years before Christ, brought with him into Scotland

* It is mentioned in 1851, by the distinguished officer who was then Lieut.-Colonel Williams, the British Commissioner for the settlement of the Turkish boundary question, in a letter from Hamadan, Persia, for which see Literary Gazette, 12th of April, 1851. The stone has a long story attached to it.

These facts are stated by Mr. Empson, in his account of some South American figures in gold, obtained from the sacred lake of Guataveta, in Columbia.—Archæol. Æliana, vol. ii. p. 253.

the stone seat of royalty on which the kings had been inaugurated in Ireland, and on which his successors were wont to be crowned; and they add, more credibly, that the same stone was afterwards placed by king Kenneth in the abbey of Scone about the year of our Lord 850. Scone was, from very early times in Scotish history, the place of convention-the Scottish Hill of Tara-and upon its Folk-mote eminence the kings were accustomed to be crowned until the time of Kenneth; after which epoch the kings of Scotland, down to the time of Robert Bruce, received the crown sitting upon that stone, in the old monastery of Scone, which was a foundation of unknown antiquity by followers of the rule of St. Columba, who were called Culdees, and derived their institution from Iona.*

There can be no doubt that this ancient marble seat was thus used for the inauguration of the Scotish kings under the idea that it was the LIA FAIL, or Stone of Destiny, of their Irish progenitors, which had been brought originally from the East. But the existence of the LIA FAIL upon the Hill of Tara may be traced, as we have said, from, at all events, the sixth century downward; and there this stone-which is described by Mr. Petrie as an upright pillar nine feet high-at present stands near its original locality-the talisman of the kingdom in the old traditions of the country. The Fatale Marmor of Scone is found to have been only a substitute. When the Irish colonists of Scotland, to give stability to their new kingdom, begged the Lia Fail as a loan from the mother country, she, with more than Hibernian prudence, retained the original, and sent over a substitute, or at most a portion-a loan which the colonists accepted in faith, and, with Scotish care, prized too highly ever to return; and they seem to have transferred to it the prophecy that a prince of Scotia's race should govern wheresoever it should be found. Buchanan, the Scotish historian, identifies it with the stone which had travelled to Scotland, through Ireland, from Spain, and speaks of it as "the rude marble stone to which popular belief attributed the fate of the kingdom."

Scone was founded or re-formed anew by Alexander I., who about A.D. 1115 brought thither canons regular of St. Augustine from the house of St. Oswald of Nostel, near Pontefract.