PREFACE.
The Stone of Truth is as old as the times of the Druids. The celebrated Lia Fail was a stone of truth. Certain stones were oracles in old times. There was a stone in Oriel, and a celebrated stone called Cloeh Labhrais in the south which were oracular. A man who suspected his wife made her stand upon the southern stone to swear that she had not wronged him. She spied a man she knew too well far away upon the mountain, and swore she had never done anything she ought not to have done—no more than with that man on the skyline. The heart of the stone was broken with this equivocation, and it burst asunder exclaiming
, "even truth itself is bitter."
The idea is Pagan, but this story is motivated in a Christian manner, by alleging that the stone derived its miraculous power from St. Patrick's having knelt on it in prayer. I got this story from Francis O'Conor. For the original Irish, see "Religious Songs of Connacht," vol. II., p. 230.
THE STORY.
There was a man in it, hundreds and hundreds of years ago, whose name was Páidin[18] O Ciarbháin [Keerwaun, or Kerwin] and he was living close to Cong in West Connacht. Páidin was a strange man; he did not believe in God or in anything about him. It's often the priest thought to bring him to Mass, but it was no use for him, for Páidin would not take the advice of priest or bishop. He believed that man was like the beast, and he believed that when man died there was no more about him.
Páidin lived an evil life; he used to be going from house to house by day, and stealing in the night.
Now, at the time that St. Patrick was in West Connacht seeking to make Christians of the Pagans, he went down one day upon his knees, on a great flag stone, to utter prayers, and he left after him a great virtue in the same stone, for anybody who might speak above that stone, it was necessary for him to tell the clear truth, he could not tell a lie, and for that reason the people gave the name to that flag of the Stone of Truth.