Now, it is quite true that Mr. Skene, the best authority on Celtic Scotland, rejects this story of the Stone of Destiny in most parts as legendary: he believes the Scone stone to have been merely the sacred coronation-block of the Pictish Kings at Scone, and never to have come from Ireland at all. Professor Ramsay thinks it is a piece of red {114}sandstone broken off the rock of that district of Scotland. Even Professor Rhys (who gives a most interesting account of the Tara Stone) seems to have doubts as to the migration. But, true or not, the story will amply serve my purpose here; for I use it only to illustrate the equally dubious wanderings of a Hebrew sacred stone, at which we will arrive in due time; and one legend is surely always the best possible parallel of another. In the course of ages, as religions develop, and especially as a few great gods grow to overshadow the minor ancestral Lares and spirits, it often comes about that sacred stones of the older faith have a new religious significance given them in the later system. Thus we have seen the Argives worshipped their old sacred stone under the name of Zeus Kappotas; the Thespians identified theirs with the later Hellenic Eros; and the Megarians considered a third as the representative of Phoebus. The original local sacred stone of Delos has been found on the spot where it originally stood, beneath the feet of the statue of the Delian Apollo. And this, I am glad to see, is Mr. Andrew Lang’s view also; for he remarks of the Greek unwrought stones, “They were blocks which bore the names of gods, Hera, or Apollo, names perhaps given, as De Brosses says, to the old fetishistic objects of worship, _after_ the anthropomorphic gods entered [I should say, were developed in] Hellas.” So, too, in India, the local sacred stones have been identified with the deities of the Hindu pantheon; Mr. Hislop remarks that in every part of the Deccan (where Hinduism is of comparatively late introduction) four or five stones may often be seen in the ryot’s field, placed in a row and daubed with red paint, which the peasants call the Five Pandavas; but, says Dr. Tylor, “he reasonably takes these Hindu names to have superseded more ancient appellations.” Islam, in like manner, has adopted the Kaaba, the great black stone of the Holy Place at Mecca; and the Egyptian religion gave {115}a new meaning to the pillar or monolith, by shaping it as an obelisk to represent a ray of the rising sun-god.