Lia Fáil

The Lia Fáil — the Stone of Destiny or the Speaking Stone — stands on the Hill of Tara in County Meath, where it has stood for millennia. It is one of the four treasures brought to Ireland by the Tuatha Dé Danann: the others being the Sword of Lugh, the Spear of Lugh, and the Cauldron of the Dagda. Of the four, only the Lia Fáil remained in Ireland after the gods retreated underground.

Its function was to authenticate kingship: when the rightful High King of Ireland stood on it or touched it, the stone would cry out — scream, in some accounts — in recognition. It was the arbiter of legitimacy in an age when legitimacy was everything. The last High King it is said to have cried for was Conn of the Hundred Battles, in the second century AD; after that, the voices of the stones fell silent.

The stone that stands on the Hill of Tara today is an upright phallus of granite, about 1.5 metres tall, erected at the Mound of the Hostages. Whether this is the original Lia Fáil or a substitute is debated — some scholars have argued the real stone was taken to Scotland as the Stone of Scone by Fergus Mór mac Eirc. The Hill of Tara and the stone remain the single most potent site in Irish mythological geography.