Tara's coronation stone is said to roar when the rightful king touches it, and a modern highway route sparked one of Ireland's largest heritage protests over ground the legend never had to prove itself on.
The stone and the kings it judged
Tara traditionally served as the seat of the High Kings of Ireland, and the Lia Fail, or Stone of Destiny, still standing on the hill, is said in legend to roar aloud when touched by the person destined to be the rightful king, a folkloric test of legitimacy tied directly to this specific stone rather than to the wider hill in general.
A motorway routed close to the hill
In the 2000s, the planned route of the M3 motorway near Tara prompted large-scale protests and international attention from archaeologists and heritage advocates, who argued that construction so close to the wider Tara landscape risked damaging associated but less obvious archaeological features in the surrounding countryside, a modern development dispute distinct from, though echoing, the earlier destructive excavations covered in this entry's companion article.
As this entry's companion article covers
The two damaging excavation episodes at Tara, roughly a century apart, including a search motivated by belief the Ark of the Covenant was buried there, are addressed directly in this entry's companion article rather than repeated here.