“Alex Salmond given part of the Stone of Scone by son of student who stole it”, reports the Telegraph:
Alex Salmond was given part of the Stone of Scone, also known as the Stone of Destiny, by the son of one of the students who stole it from Westminster Abbey, newly released Scottish Cabinet papers have disclosed.
Prof Sir Neil MacCormick presented the then First Minister with part of the stone, on which kings and queens of Scotland were traditionally crowned, in 2008.
Sir Neil’s father, John MacCormick, advised and bankrolled the Glasgow University students who took the 150kg stone from the Abbey on Christmas Day 1950.
So Professor Sir (note the Sir!) Neil MacCormick felt free to give away this historic artefact because he inherited it from his father, who stole it while it was on display to the public. And Mr Alex Salmond, presumably on the strength of then being First Minister of Scotland, felt free to take an object of significance in Scottish history into his personal possession as if it were a mere curio. Nice to see the right of conquest and the hereditary principle being reaffirmed in this day and age.
No wonder he thought he had a right to rule Scotland! Where can I get a piece?
So Oily Alec believes that the Stone is of low value, then?
This implies that the stone has been desecrated.
It has, Pat. The f***wits who nicked it back in 1950 broke it in half in the process. Shows how much reverence they had for the thing. Of course if you aren’t careful sandstone doesn’t break cleanly, so presumably this is a small fragment which fell off at the time.
It’s said that the real one is actually intact in the Arlington Bar near Glasgow University, where they were students. But I suspect the truth is that they procured a fake when they broke it, with the inention of substituting it to cover up their ham-fistedness, but their plans were foiled when the real one was found.
The “Stone of Destiny” is a medieval fake created from local sandstone for Edward I of England to hide the fact that he hadn’t got hold of the real one.
The real one didn’t re-surface, because it was in the hands of the Comyn family or supporters of King John (Balliol), all of whom hated Robert the Bruce.
The massive clue to it being fake is the fact that it is made of sandstone.
The real stone was probably an iron meteorite which fell to earth in pagan times, hence it’s veneration.
I asked the Scottish architectural historian and historical novelist Nigel Tranter about this, and that was his view, as it is mine.
One of the many pathetic things John Major did was to send the stone back to Scotland, as if that would pacify the Scottish National Socialists. What a dud that man was.
Yes indeed Natalie, and Pat, Nicholas and Sam Duncan.
Agreed JohnK.
Very interesting Aetius.
Aetius:
That is an interesting theory. One has to wonder why a rather uninteresting piece of sandstone became the “stone of destiny”.
I thought that Idi Amin was the Last King of Scotland.
Fair point, Aetius. By “real”, I mean of course the one that’s been known for the last seven hundred years or so.
Hey, I’m still disappointed that the SNP leader after Salmond and Sturgeon wasn’t named Haddock or Herring or similar.
Captain Haddock would receive my vote, if I possessed one.
“A billion blistering barnacles”
How can anyone prove that a rock is/was part of the stone of destiny? A bit like all those pieces of the true cross. If joined together, they would make hundreds of ‘true crosses’.