Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 14, 1903.djvu/42

30 Skene, and more recently by Mr. P. J. O'Reilly, to an exhaustive analysis, which renders it clear that there is no trustworthy evidence that the stone of Tara is the Coronation Stone. The antecedent improbability is great; and even if it were indisputable that the stone in question was no longer at Tara in the eleventh century, the chasm between that period and Fergus, whose very existence only rests on legend, would still have to be bridged, and the variants of the story would need to be reconciled.

The properties of the stone of Tara were oracular; and the stone itself was one of a large class of stones endowed in popular opinion with divining powers, and actually resorted to for the purpose of inquiry. When the reputation of an oracle is once established, it is consulted for many purposes. Not only political, but juridical and domestic purposes are enumerated by the author of the Colloquy in regard to the Lia Fáil. Among these functions is the recognition of the monarch. The phrase used in the Colloquy is ambiguous. It is not stated why, or on what occasion, the stone was expected to make its voice heard. In practice the only object of obtaining such a recognition would be that of determining the succession to the throne. Keating supplies the missing explanation. "It was a stone," he says, "on which were enchantments, for it used to roar under the person who had the best right to obtain the sovereignty of Ireland at the time of the men of Ireland being in assembly at Tara to choose a king over them."