Having written about leprechauns last year in March, I figured it would be a bit redundant to do so again. But I struggled with coming up with something tied into St. Patrick’s Day that wasn’t too obscure to find material on, while also not picking something so broad as to write a small novel. In the end, I settled on the Blarney Stone.
The Blarney Stone is a famous stone set within the walls of Blarney Castle, located about 8 kilometers northwest of Cork, Ireland. According to legend, kissing the Blarney Stone bestows great eloquence and flattery upon the kisser. This idea is so well-known that the word blarney has come be synonymous with witty, clever, or flattering speech.
There are a couple variants of how this story came into being. In an early version of the story, Cormac Laidir McCarthy, the builder of Blarney Castle, became embroiled in a lawsuit during the construction of the castle. He appealed to the goddess, Clíodhna—the Irish goddess patron of County Cork, where Blarney is located. Clíodhna told Cormac to kiss the first stone he found on his way to court. He did what she told him to do and as a result, he was granted the articulateness required to win his case in the court. McCarthy then took the stone he had kissed and integrated it into the castle’s parapet.
Another story at a later date tells that Queen Elizabeth I, trying to impose her influence on Ireland, demanded Cormac MacDermot MacCarthy, the Lord of Blarney at that time, to surrender right to his lands to the Crown. He decided to see the Queen to appeal his circumstance, but he was troubled as he did not believe could persuade her to change her mind. As he set out, he met an old woman who told him about the stone built into the castle and its ability to grant eloquent speech. In this version of the story, the stone was built in secret part of the castle, and Cormac was able to find it and kiss it successfully. In his audience with the Queen, he was able to address her with “speech so soft and words so fair” that he never again was asked to renounce his rights to his land. He then took the Blarney Stone from its hidden place and incorporated into the castle parapet in 1446.
There are a handful of other legends where the stone was from Scotland, or that it had been taken from Ireland and then returned again. But work done by the geologist of the University of Glasgow found in 2014 that the stone’s geochemical composition matches the local carboniferous limestone.
The Blarney Stone is still at Blarney Castle to this day, and you can visit it yourself in you’re in the area. Millions of mouths have passed over the Stone from optimistic kissers looking to improve their speech and increase their influence. And if you’re like me, who will take a hard pass on getting mouth-herpes from an Irish rock, Proverbs 17:28 might be a better-suited mandate to live by: “Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise; when he closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent.” I’ll just walk around the castle grounds, thanks.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
