Scone

“ I snatched my scone off the fire, raw as it was, put it into my haversack, and formed. We remained under arms until dark, and then took up our old quarters upon Gallows Hill, where I ate my raw scone, sweetly seasoned by hunger. In our advance to the town we were much entertained by some of our men who had got over a wall the day before, when the enemy were in the rear ”

“ Scone is situated on the left bank of the river Tay, and within the ancient district of Gouerin or Gowry, and the circumstances connected with this district, and with Scone as the ancient capital of Scotland, present features very analogous to those recorded in the legend by which the province of Meath was formed, and Teamhair or Tara constituted the chief seat of the monarchy. ”

“ Almost from the time of the chevalier's landing, however, it was discerned that his position was well-nigh desperate, and even before his arrival at Scone he observed, by way of consoling his followers: ‘For myself, it is no new thing for me to be unfortunate.’ Whatever may have been the ardour kindled by Mar's enthusiastic eulogy of the prince as ‘the first gentleman I ever knew,’ it was quenched as soon as he presented himself to the ‘little kings with their armies’ at Perth. ”

“ Scone, Cluny, Logierait and Dalginch were the places named for Gowrie, Stormont, Atholl, and Fife; Kintulloch for Strathearn; Forfar and Dunottar for Angus and the Mearns; and Aberdeen for Mar and Buchan. Inverness was named for Ross and Moray, whilst Stirling was the place appointed for transactions in which “the men beyond the Forth” were implicated; for though in modern times this description would apply to the northern Scots, when Scone was the capital and Gowrie the heart of the kingdom, “all beyond the Scots-water” meant the inhabitants of the Lothians, Cumbria, and Galloway. ”

“ Most of the Scottish kings were crowned at Scone, the last function being held on the 1st of January 1651, when Charles II. received the crown. Apparently there was never any royal residence in the town, owing to the proximity of Perth. Probably the ancient House of Scone, which stood near the abbey, provided the kings with temporary accommodation. Both the abbey and the house were burned down by the Reformers in 1559, and next year the estates were granted to the Ruthvens. ”

“ The Chevalier returned to Scone in the evening, and notwithstanding the ominous symptoms of the day, proceeded to form a council preparatory to exercising the functions of royalty. From Scone he soon issued no less than six proclamations; one for a general thanksgiving for his safe arrival; another enjoining the ministers to pray for him in the churches; a third, establishing the currency of foreign coin; a fourth, ordering a meeting of the convention of estates; a fifth, commanding all fencible men from sixteen to sixty to repair to his standard ”

“ In June 1605 Scone, as comptroller and captain of the guards, was appointed to proceed to Cantyre in Argyllshire to receive the obedience of the chiefs of the clans of the southern Hebrides, and payment of the king's rents and duties (Reg. P. C. Scotl. vii. 59) . He was one of the assessors for the trial at Linlithgow in January 1606 of the ministers concerned in the contumacious Aberdeen assembly of 1605. In March 1607 he was appointed one of the commissioners to represent the king in the synods of Perth and Fife, in connection with the scheme for the appointment of perpetual moderators. ”

“ After the city of Perth had come into the possession of the lords of the congregation in 1559, they wrote to Hepburn that unless he would come and assist them ‘they could neither save nor spare his place’ (the palace of Scone) . He expressed his willingness to come, but as ‘his answer was long of coming,’ the townsmen of Dundee, who had a special grudge against him for the execution of Mylne, proceeded, notwithstanding the remonstrances of Knox and Lord James Stuart, to sack and burn the church and palace of Scone (Knox, i. 359–61) . ”

“ We now learn some further particulars of the coronation of the Scottish kings, and we are told by Fordun that the bishop of St. Andrews, the head of the Scotch Church, and the seven earls of Scotland—the earls of Fife, Stratherne, Atholl, Angus, Menteith, Buchan, and Lothian—took Alexander, brought him to Scone, and there raised him to the throne in honour and peace, with the approval of God and man, and with more grandeur and glory than any one till then, while all wished him joy and none gainsaid him. ”

“ The good Abbot of Scone was invited from his hermitage; and when he heard from the embassadors sent to him, that the brave young warrior whom he had entertained was the resistless Wallace, he no longer thought of the distant and supine Bruce, but centered every wish for his country in the authority of her deliverer. A few days brought him to Stirling; and wishing to remain near the most constant residence of his noble friend, he requested that, instead of being restored to Scone, he might be installed in the vacant monastery of Cambus-Kenneth. Wallace gladly acquiesced ”

“ Kenneth, the second son of Alpin, having enlarged his dominions by the conquest of the Picts, transferred the stone to Scone. As the supreme kings of Ireland and the kings of the Scots used to be inaugurated by being seated on the ancient chair before it was carried to Scone, so were the kings at Perth installed into regal office down to the time that Edward I. carried to England the sacred relic, highly prized by every Scotchman. ”

“ In 1607 he was moderator of the synod held at Perth, to which James VI sent the captain of his guards, Lord Scone, to compel the acceptance of a permanent moderator. Scone threatened Row that if he opposed the scheme ten or twelve of his guards would discharge their culverins at him. Row, nothing daunted, preached from ten till two, bitterly inveighing against the proposed appointment. Scone did not understand Latin, but, on being informed of Row's meaning, severely rebuked him. ”

“ Salemina always describes a Scotch scone as an aspiring but unsuccessful soda-biscuit of the New England sort. Stevenson, in writing of that dense black substance, inimical to life, called Scotch bun, says that the patriotism that leads a Scotsman to eat it will hardly desert him in any emergency. ”

“ The ferry of Kinclaven, immediately at the junction of the rivers, before the bridge of Isla was built, was the only means of getting to Mieklour, without going round by Coupar in Angus, and Blair Gowrie.
Scone, where the Kings of Scotland were wont to be crowned, was the first place of note I passed after leaving Perth. About seven miles from Perth, on the west side of Tay, is Stanley; where are large cotton works, which have injured the beauty of the place, but have made it more profitable to the owner. ”

“ No unauthorized personnel near the BR."
"No non-Russians, anyway," said Scone flatly. "I know. But this is an emergency."
"You must go," she said, raising the barrel of her gun. She did not point it at them, but they did not doubt she would.
Scone turned and strode off, Broward following. When they had turned the first corner, Scone said, "We must leave the base on the first excuse. We have to get back to Clavius."
"So we can start our own war?"
"Not necessarily. Just declare independence. The Russ may have their belly full of death." ”

“ The historical documents which make any direct statement on the subject, with one exception, belong to an artificial system of history, constructed after the eleventh century to serve the purposes of a political and ecclesiastical controversy, and cannot be trusted to afford us anything but distorted fragments of true history, and we are left with the solitary statement of Flann Mainistrech, that Kenneth was the first king who gave the kingdom of Scone to the Gaidheal. ”

“ It is certainly known to have been the stone on which the Scottish kings were inaugurated at Scone, near Perth, like the Palladium of Rome, of which Ovid (Fasti, lib. vi. 382) writes,—
"Imperium secum transferret ilia loci;"
and it was therefore but a measure of policy which induced Edward I. to transfer "it to his own capital, when he fancied he had reduced Scotland to a province of his English kingdom. Richard III. used it at his coronation, as it is no doubt meant in the extract which Mr. J. G. Nichols gives in his Life of Edward V. (Gent. Mag., March, 1855, p. 256) . ”

“ That the violent beginning made in Perth had given to the populace a taste for the pleasures of destruction, however, is very fully evident, and it soon became clear that when the preachers and their protectors moved "to make reformation," the mob who followed them would leave nothing but ruins behind. This and the method of it is very well set forth in the case of Scone, a place of great historical interest, where the ancient kings of Scotland had been crowned. ”

“ When the ‘Communitas’ or Estates of Scotland met at Scone on the 5th of February 1283, to regulate the succession to the crown, we find that the great holders of the land in Scotland consisted at this time, first, of thirteen of the great hereditary earldoms, one of which was held by a family of Anglic descent, and four by Norman barons who had succeeded by inheritance in the female line to the ancient Celtic earls ”

“ To modern Scone we could come on that side by a tramway which is turning this goodly village into a suburb of Perth. Even when we get into the Highlands we shall find how the squalid “Tullyveolans” and “Glenburnies” have been improved away generations ago. At the gates of great proprietors, at all events, a Scottish village usually compares well with an English one in point of comfort if not of picturesqueness. ”

“ His brother, Kenneth Macalpin, united the Scottish Dalriad monarchy of Argyll and the Isles, whose chief fort was Dunstaffnage, near Oban, or Dunadd on the Crinan moors, with the Pictish monarchy of northern and central Scotland, and Scone became the chief fort of this kingdom in the middle of the ninth century (844) . Kenneth is called in Scottish chronicles a Scot, but in the Irish annals king of the Picts, as are also several of his successors. ”

“ Of course, mental persuasion was useless with the Russians. With fellow Americans, well...."
"How many people do you have at Clavius?"
Broward hesitated, then said, "Four. All absolutely dependable. Under my orders. And you?"
"More than you," said Scone. "You understand that I'm not sharing the command with you? We can't take time out to confer. We need a man who can give orders to be carried out instantly. And my word will be life or death? ”

“ This would sound like conclusive evidence, but it is none the less held by leading modern archæologists—including Dr. W. F. Skene, who has published a monograph on the subject [102] —that the Stone of Scone and the Stone of 72Tara were never the same. ”

“ A revolution in that century led to a dynasty of kings of Scottish descent being permanently placed on the Pictish throne, and to a Scottish element being largely and to an increasing extent introduced into the Pictish population. The capital of the Pictish kingdom had at this time been Scone, and around this central point the new Scottish monarchy had its chief influence, and in the neighbouring districts the new Scottish population would be most numerous. ”

“ Lord Mansfield told me yesterday that there were some people in the town who wore the identical dresses that had been worn in Charles I.’s time. At eleven o’clock we set off as before. We drove through part of Perth, and had a very fine view of Scone. A few miles on, we passed the field of battle of Luncarty, where tradition says the Danes were beaten by Lord Erroll’s ancestor. We also passed Lord Lynedoch’s property. We then changed horses at the “New Inn” at Auchtergaven. The Grampians came now distinctly into view; they are indeed a grand range of mountains. ”

“ A curious combination of the fierce warrior and the pious churchman, he manifested the one aspect of his character in his ruthless suppression of an insurrection in his northern dominion (thus gaining for himself the title of “the Fierce”) , the other in his munificent foundation of bishoprics and abbeys. Among the latter were those of Scone and Inchcolm. His strong championship of the independence of the Scottish church involved him in struggles with both the English metropolitan sees. ”

“ He was sent to be tried by his own countrymen; for as some of them would profit by his death, it was considered that making them his judges would be a sure method of getting rid of him. The result realised the estimate formed of the character of the Scotch, who condemned him and hanged him as a matter of beesness, because there was a small profit to be got out of the transaction. Poor Argyle had been the very party who had put the crown on the king's head a few years before at Scone; but, "Life," said he, on the scaffold, "is a toss up, and it's heads I lose on this melancholy occasion." ”

“ His son Kenneth acquires the kingdom of Dalriada, and the Scots again emerge and extend themselves into Argyll and the 319Isles. Kenneth then invades the kingdom of the Picts, but does not finally subdue it till five years after; and in place of this we have the story of the plot by which he treacherously slays the principal nobles of the Picts. St. Berchan in his so-called prophecy alludes to this tale, but adds it to a reference to a war, and removes the scene of it to Scone. He says—
A man who shall feed ravens, fight battles ”

“ Lester, I'm sure you're needing those hot scones!"
The scones proved all that hungry travellers could wish, and twice they exhausted the hotel's largest teapot. Mr. Warner hurried them over the meal, and soon they were in the car again, and the iron roofs of the little township a grey blur in the distance. The road was good firm sand, with a few softer patches where bullock teams had cut up the surface; but on the whole they made good time over it, slipping through the scented scrub that bordered the track. Wild flowers, unfamiliar and beautiful, gleamed among the trees in every clear patch ”