[118] This flagstone, the Lia Fáil, was endowed with the property of shrieking whenever pressed by the foot of a lawful king. The frequency of vocal stones in Irish legend will be referred to later on. Popular tradition identifies the Lia Fáil with the stone now inside the Coronation Chair at Westminster, stolen by Edward I. from Scone, where the kings of Alban used to be crowned upon it, and whither it was said to have been brought from Tara by the Dalriad Scots. I believe, however, that the identity of the stone so taken to Scotland by the Dalriada with that of Tara has been impugned. The practice of inaugurating a king or chief upon a certain stone survived into late historical times. [119] The habitual presence of the great tree outside the raths of the Tuatha Dé Danann is doubtless to be ascribed to the custom which prevailed in Ireland of having in a similar position a public tree of the tribe, round or beside which assemblies were held and games celebrated. The Irish chronicles frequently report the cutting down of such a tree by raiders as an insult to the invaded tribe. This practice was exactly paralleled in the mediæval republics of Italy, where an invading army would often put scorn and offence upon a city by cutting down the public tree which stood outside the gates, and was the central point in games and festivals. [120] Cethlenn was the wife of Balor of the Mighty Blows, a Fomorian chief, and therefore of the Chthonian race of Tethra. She has left her name to Enniskillen, Inis Cethlenn, Cethlenn’s Island. [121] _The Adventures of Árt, son of Conn, and the Courtship of Delbchaem, Érin_, iii. 149 _sqq._ Edited and translated by Mr. R. I. Best, from the _Echtra Áirt_, one of the _Prím-scéla_ of Ireland, preserved in Early Modern Irish in the Book of Fermoy, R.I.A., a MS. of the fifteenth century. [122] Edited, with translation and notes, by Mr. Whitley Stokes, _Irische Texte_, III. i. 183 _sqq._, from the Book of Ballymote, R.I.A., and the Yellow Book of Lecan, T.C.D., both MSS. of the fourteenth century. [123] Another instance of the sacred character with which the Irish code of honour invested a pledge, and which is apparent in the stories, before quoted, of Mider, Conn, Árt, etc. So in the _Baile Mongáin_, a story printed by Prof. K. Meyer as an appendix to his _Voyage of Bran_, Mongán is obliged to surrender his wife Dubhlaca to the King of Leinster (apparently an euhemerisation of Manannán, who figures in an earlier version, also given by Prof. Meyer (_op. cit._)) in fulfilment of a like promise. [124] At the same time, it is perceptible that incidents of the _märchen_ type are more numerous in this group than in the great heroic cycles. [125] In the story of Cormac, Manannán’s Paradise, instead of lying oversea, is placed within a dún, at which Cormac arrives by land.