160 Mr. Petrie on the History and Antiquities of Tara Hill. 



eceap Da cpaij ruile ceiiin Between two shores of strong floods, 



TTlaj Pail uile pop Bipinn. Magh Fail [is a name] for all Erin. 



. Dr. O' Conor, mAeedi— Stowe Catalogue, p. 27, — states, that "this stone 

 is said to have been removed from Temora, the royal Rath of Meath, to 

 Cruachan, the royal Rath of Connacht, at a remote period of time, and to have 

 ceased to emit its usual sound, after it w^as profaned by Cuchullin, who resented 

 its silence when his friend Fiach,an usurper, was inaugurated." But Dr. O'Conor 

 appears to have entirely mistaken the sense of his author. The passage was 

 obviously fabricated to sustain the claim to the Irish throne put forward in the 

 twelfth century by the Connacian princes ; and the statement found in the Irish 

 MS. is simply, that the monarch, Cormac Mac- Art, saw in a dream, that the Lia 

 Fail would be removed from Tara to Croghan, as in the following passage from the 

 College MS. H. 2. 7, " Ctiylin^ Do coimaic Copmac ua Cuint) i Uempaij .i. 

 Goco ^unnac pi^ lJla6, Dap leip, Do cmcrain cu Uempai^, ocup coipn na 

 n-jjmllDo cocbail Do a Uempms pecraip, ocup a bpet cu Cpuacain, ocup a 

 paDuD Do a paic Cpuacan." i. e. Cormac O'Cuinnsaw a vision at Temur : that 

 Eochy Gunnat, king of Ulster, came to Temur, and took the Stone of the Hostages 

 away from Temur, and carried it to Croghan, and stuck it in the Rath of Croghan. 

 The only value of such passages, however, is — and this is an important one — that 

 they clearly identify the Lia Fail with the stone on the Mound of the Hostages. 

 What then is to be thought of the legendary account given by all the Scottish 

 historians from Fordun, Winton, and Boetius, down to the present time, that 

 this stone — " the stone of fate," as they call it — was sent from Ireland for the coro- 

 nation of Fergus Mac Ere, the first of the Dalriadic kings, in the fifth century, 

 and that it was carried by Edward I. to Westminster, where it still remains, 

 under the coronation chair of the monarchs of the British Isles ? Now it is a 

 remarkable fact, that though this Scottish account has been adopted by the Irish 

 themselves, since the succession of the house of Stuart to the British throne 

 seemed to verify the ancient prediction connected with it, yet no Irish account 

 has been found to support it earlier than that of Keating, who evidently adopted 

 the statement of Boetius' well known verse, which he quotes, with the pal- 

 pable view of sustaining the right of the first Charles to his throne : — 



" Ni fallat fatum, Scoti quocunque locatum 

 Invenient lapidem, regnare tenentur ibidem." 



