ROSEMARY Goring (“Romance of the Stone should see it returned to fitting home”, The Herald, March 21) makes only a passing reference to the authenticity of the so-called Stone of Destiny. But there is still a strong suspicion that the original stone on which every King of Scotland sat from 847AD for his coronation was not the ugly lump of Perthshire sandstone which is currently on display in Edinburgh Castle.
Early records describe the Coronation Stone as an almost circular piece of polished black rock covered with hieroglyphic letters and symbols. It was reputed to have been the original “Jacob’s Pillow”, and was brought to Ireland and then Scotland by St Columba as a religious relic, before becoming the Royal Coronation Stone.
When Edward I arrived in Scotland in 1296 and demanded that the abbot and monks of Scone Abbey hand over the symbolic stone, he then unwisely went off on a three-week hunting trip up north before returning to collect his trophy.The monks thus had ample time to hide the real Stone and replace it with a large lump of local sandstone, duly handed over to the English King.
In fact Edward returned to Scotland two years later and took Scone Abbey to pieces brick by brick, searching for something he never found. Perhaps he realised that he had been duped with a fake, and that is why he changed his mind about putting a golden chair in Westminster Abbey to house the Stone and settled for a carved wooden chair instead. A hundred years later the English offered the return of the Westminster Stone to King Robert the Bruce but the offer was declined, so perhaps he knew even then that it was a fake.
So while I fully support Perth’s claim to have the Stone of Scone returned to its original home, perhaps the real Stone of Destiny has never left there and still lies in some unknown hiding place, perhaps the nearby Kinnoull Hill, never to be discovered.
Iain AD Mann,
7 Kelvin Court, Glasgow.
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