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Nicole's
Travelogues and Budget Travel Tips..
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HILL OF TARA, IRELAND
I visited the Hill of Tara with Mary Gibbons Tours that I booked at the Dublin Tourism Center for € 35. We were picked up in front of the Pizza Hut around the corner from the Tourism Center at 10:15am in a huge tour bus. Yikes! It's the first time I've been in a big tour bus since, humm, I think since I went to Switzerland when I was in high school. Anyway, we headed to the Hill of Tara while Mary (who is an archeologist) starts talking about the sights. Unfortunately, I was kind of zoning in and out of the lecture because I was a tad bit hungover by my Temple Bar experience the night before. I'm too old to be hungover! Ha ha apparently not!
The Hill of Tara, known as Temair in gaeilge, was once the ancient seat of power in Ireland – 142 kings are said to have reigned there in prehistoric and historic times. In ancient Irish religion and mythology Temair was the sacred place of dwelling for the gods, and was the entrance to the otherworld. Saint Patrick is said to have come to Tara to confront the ancient religion of the pagans at its most powerful site. One interpretation of the name Tara says that it means a "place of great prospect" and indeed on a clear day it is claimed that features in half the counties of Ireland can be seen from atop Tara.
Sticking out of the hill, is the very phallic Stone of Destiny (Lia Fail) . The Stone sits on top of the King's Seat (Forradh) of Temair and is the most famous of Tara's monuments. The ancient coronation stone was brought here according to mythology by the godlike people, the Tuatha Dé Danann, as one of their sacred objects. It was said to roar when touched by the rightful king of Tara.
At the site, there is a statue of St. Patrick and the Church at Tara (where there are two standing stones in the church graveyard). It was incredibly windy at the site. It had just rained and it was really slippery. At one point on the hill, I started to slip and the wind kind of pushed me back up. I swear! I even turned to this woman and said "Did you see that?" She did.
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Formerly located just north of the Mound of the Hostages, the stone was moved to its current site after the Battle of Tara during the Irish revolution of 1798 to mark the graves of 400 rebels who died here. Many historians accept that the present granite pillar at Tara is the true Stone of Destiny, but a number of people have argued that the Stone of Scone is in fact the real thing. One legend states that it was only one of four stones positioned at the cardinal directions on Tara - and it is interesting to note that the Hall of Tara, the ancient political centre of Ireland, is aligned North-South. 
