![]() ![]() #NIGEL TRANTER PORTABLE#Columba's portable altar, Princess Scota's throne, etc., was not likely to be a mere shapeless lump of soft red sandstone, devoid of all grace, ornamentation or suitably enduring qualities - for of course it did in fact break down the middle when it was taken out of the Coronation Chair at Westminster. The first, common sense, told me, after due reflection, that the Stone which had such a long and stirring history, had been carried about through the mists of antiquity had been described as 'the marble chair,' St. Inspector of Ancient Monuments for Scotland. What made me believe, you may ask, that the Westminster Stone, the one that I had got myself involved with and taken certain risks for, was not in fact what it seemed to be, not the original? Well, strangely enough, two factors ã common sense (if I may be allowed to claim a modicum of such which I agree is debateable) and the testimony of no less official and resounding an authority than the late H.M. ![]() To make it do so, at least fictionally, and then let the story more or less write itself, was my self-appointed task. What I am pointing out here is that I had some knowledge of the way things would go, popular reaction, how the official mind would be apt to work, etc., if the true Stone of Destiny was indeed to turn up in Scotland today. But that is another story ã and one which one day, perhaps, may be written. No one, I need hardly add, was more shocked than I was when, in fact, the Stone was whisked away over the Border in the back of a police car, non-stop, within 24 hours. What Might Happen If the Real Stone Was Found? Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh, for at least a month while tempers cooled and a dignified decision taken as to its ultimate resting place ã given all that, I believe that I would do the same again. #NIGEL TRANTER PLUS#I have been blamed for my share in that but given the circumstances prevailing then, plus the promises that had been given that the Stone would be allowed to remain in Scotland, possibly in St. That took me a lot of talking-out-of! But I was involved in the bringing of the errant Stone to light at ruined Arbroath Abbey that April day in 1951. I knew no more than other and more respectable citizens until the press began telephoning me with the news, demanding comment, information, names:- for it so happened that I had published a novel called The Freebooters barely a year before, in which I rashly made some of my wild characters propose to do this very thing :- bring the Stone back to Scotland. I had nothing at all to do with the abstraction thereof. For my sins, I had been slightly involved in the rumpus about the Stone that came back to Scotland so dramatically and in unorthodox fashion. I did not start, as it were, quite from scratch. Columba's altar, holy relic of our ancestors? Is the lump of red sandstone at present so jealously guarded in Westminster Abbey by electric eyes, chains and burglar alarmsãis that the Stone of Destiny at all? Or just a 700-year-old phony, a piece of local Scone scenery that Edward the Hammer of the Scots took south with him when he could not lay hands on the real stone in 1296ã and which Ian Hamilton and his student friends abstracted in 1950, believing that it would be more fittingly kept in Scotland ã and thereby set Scotland Yard, Scotland and much of England, by the ears? And if so, where is the other, the original, the ancient Liath Fail, talisman of Scotland's kings, pillow of Jacob, St. But which Stone of Destiny? There is the rub. The Stone of Destiny has been news for 700 yearsã and may well be so for as long again. ![]() ![]() In my novel, The Stone, I did not so much work on research as research rather worked for me. Since then, of course, the so-called Stone of Scone has been returned from Westminster to Edinburgh Castle but that doesn¼t answer the question, does it? This article is an example of its companions that you will find in SCOTTISH BOOKS including NIGEL TRANTER NEWS. This article first appeared in The Scots Magazine for August 1960. Here is the background for that work and some of the mystery that surrounds the real Stone of Destiny. Tranter believes that his novel The Stone has caused more public interest than any other. All rights reserved.Īn Liath Fail - But Which Stone is that of Destiny? Nigel Tranter Article: Which Stone The following article is Copyright by the Estate of Nigel Tranter. ![]()
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