Caledonia

Legend of the Celtic Stone

In the year 843, Kenneth MacAlpin was crowned king of the Scots and Picts at the small Scottish town of Scone1, uniting for the first time in history the Alban kingdom known thereafter as Scotland. For the ceremony of his coronation, from Dunstaffnage in Argyll, MacAlpin brought the sacred stone of destiny. This stone, upon which centuries of Irish kings were said to have been crowned, was also said to have been transported from Tara in Ireland centuries before by Fergus Mor mac Erc when the Dalriadic dynasty was established on the British mainland.

Upon it MacAlpin took his seat for coronation. Upon it would the kings of Scotland be crowned until the fateful year 1296, when Edward I of England captured the Stone. Edward installed it in Westminster Abbey, beneath a specially constructed chair where England’s own monarchs would henceforth be crowned. And there, with only two brief absences, the venerated Stone of Scone, symbol of Scotland’s royal links with antiquity, sat, used only for coronations, until 1996. Then, on the seven hundredth anniversary of Edward’s theft, the Stone was returned to Edinburgh Castle, there to remain except as required in Westminster Abbey for the coronation of future British monarchs.

This is the story of the origin, and what may well be the destiny, of that historic Celtic stone—hewn not in Ireland as formerly conjectured, but in the solitary Highlands of that ancient land known as Caledonia.

  

1. Pronounced “skoon” as in moon.