So, it's coming home - but where will we put

it? Stewart Lamont looks at the form of

the contenders in the Scone controversy

WHEN John Major announced he intended to return the Stone of Destiny to Scotland, there was an avalanche of suggestions as to the most appropriate site. How very Scottish, I thought. We have been complaining for 700 years about the theft of the Stone by Edward I and when we are offered it back, we immediately start bickering among ourselves about where to put it.

Then there is the other controversy - the question of whether the stone in Westminster is the genuine article. I rather liked the solution of a Herald reader in Plockton which solved both controversies at a single stroke. He advocated putting a replica stone in each of the sites with a claim and keeping everyone happy.

The original Stone of Scone was used in the coronation ceremony of Pictish kings who ruled the eastern half of Scotland north of the Central Belt before merging in the ninth century with the Scots who occupied the western half.

Unfortunately for the Picts this ``union of the crowns'' was more of a takeover than a merger and Pictish language and culture vanished. Apart from the few standing stones tucked away in east central Scotland, most of what is known about the Picts has been gleaned from references to them in the histories of other peoples.

However, they were known to be Christian and from an early date were more attracted to the Roman form than the Celtic form of Christianity. Thus their coronations would have taken place on sacred ground and the Stone would have been in the custody of the top priests in Pictdom, which centred around present day Perth.

The important places in that kingdom between 600 and 800 AD - Scone, Forteviot, Abernethy - are not exactly significant in modern Scotland, and while in siting the Stone we might have sympathy with the slogan ``Scone for the purists, Edinburgh for the tourists'', most people would agree that returning the Stone to Scone would owe more to historical purity than practicality.

If the priority is getting money out the Stone, then Edinburgh Castle next to the regalia of Scotland is an obvious choice (which is perhaps why the Secretary of State favours it). However, the Honours of Scotland are museum pieces and the patriotic potency of the Stone demands a site with more contemporary significance. Those who would want the sacred nature of the Stone to be reflected in the site might suggest St Margaret's Chapel in the Castle, dedicated to Malcolm Canmore's queen and the oldest building still in use in Edinburgh, but it is tiny and and is therefore not practical.

So which church should it be? I have discovered that several churchmen are unashamedly making a pitch for the Stone, in a spirit of friendly rivalry. At the recent installation in Stirling of the Very Rev James Harkness as Dean of the Chapel Royal two options were being aired. Stirling Castle has recently been refurbished and the one-time Chapel Royal was decked out for the occasion. Cheekily, the minister of the historic church of the Holy Rude in the lee of the Castle, Rev Morris Coull, made a pitch for the Stone when he welcomed those present.

The Chapel Royal in Stirling may soon be used again to install two new chaplains to the Queen (Rev Alastair Symington of Bearsden and Rev Ian Paterson of Linlithgow) and it would no doubt help the Castle to keep up with Edinburgh in the tourist league to have the Stone within its precincts.

The Chapel Royal until recently has not been known for its sacred qualities, having been used to store ammunition, then as a mess for the sergeant majors who would emerge from it to bark at trainee soldiers. One of those soldiers was the Rev Maxwell Craig, then in the Argylls and now general secretary of the ecumenical body Acts, and present at the recent installation as a Chaplain to the Queen. He quickly made out a case for putting the Stone in Dunblane at Scottish Churches House.

``Since all Christians in Scotland are welcome here, and owe loyalty to the Queen, we would be delighted to have the Stone,'' said Mr Craig, but admitted Dunblane was not a front runner. ``If you press me, I'd probably opt to put it where the regalia are in Edinburgh.''

The ecclesiastical alternative in Edinburgh to the Castle would not be the one-time Chapel Royal, now a ruin within Holyrood Palace, but the High Kirk of St Giles', right in the centre of the Royal Mile between the Castle and Holyrood. St Giles' houses the Thistle Chapel where the Queen installs the elite Knights of the Thistle but this chapel is even smaller than St Margaret's.

The ``cathedral'' itself was only such during the troubled Covenanter era and there would be little historical basis for associating the Stone with it. However, the main part of St Giles' has several factors going for it - strategic position, enough space, and the fact that the minister is Dean of the Thistle and the Dean of the Chapel Royal is a member.

Of course, the Stone of Destiny has been in a Scottish church until recently, if you accept that the real Stone was the one ``discovered'' in Parliament Square, Edinburgh in the sixties and handed by the ultra-nationalist 1320 Club to Rev John Mackay Nimmo of Dundee to keep behind an iron grille in his kirk in Lochee.

When the kirk had to be pulled down five years ago, the Stone was entrusted by Mr Nimmo as Keeper, to a peer of the realm who promptly used it to promote his stately home so Mr Nimmo took it back to his Dundee home. It lay there for a couple of years until the Knights Templar acquired the redundant Kirk of Dull in Perthshire where the Stone found a home close to the heart of the old Pictish kingdom. Recently Keeper Nimmo has moved it to a location known only to himself and two others for security reasons (after all they think they are dealing with the real thing, not a replica).

As a Kirk minister, Scottish nationalist, descendant of the Picts, and Keeper of what he believes to be the real Stone, what does John Nimmo believe should be done with the Stone being brought from Westminster? ``I don't care which stone is used - or if it rains stones - what matters is that Scotland should have a parliament of its own and that the Speaker of that parliament should sit on it.''

Now there's an idea, but it certainly wasn't the one Mr Major had in mind.