Answering Stone
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The Cloch Labhrais, also called the Answering Stone and the Speaking Stone[1], can be found near an old Irish road leading from Waterford to Dungarvan, two miles (3 km) from the Stradbally parish. The stone is the subject of an Irish legend, much like the Blarney Stone. The most prominent and unique feature of the stone is a large, five-foot wide split almost completely cleaving the stone in two. The large glacial boulder likely obtained the split when the glacial ice melted due to a rapid temperature change between the ice and the water of the stream. [2]
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[edit] Size and Placement
The boulder rests on the west bank of the River Deehan near Stradbally. It is split from North to South almost perfectly in the center of the rock. The split itself, five feet in width, cuts the stone into two parts: the eastern and western divisions.
[edit] The Eastern
The easternmost half of the boulder measures thirty-three feet from the north to the south end. It is eleven feet in height at the southern side of this section, eighteen feet high at the east side, seventeen feet high at the north side, and twelve feet high at the split. From the eastern side to the split itself is nineteen and one half feet.
[edit] The Western
The other half of the boulder is twenty-seven feet from north to south. It is fifteen feet high at the southern end, eleven feet at the west, thirteen feet high on the northern side, and it too is twelve feet high at the split. From the western edge to the split measures fourteen feet. A large piece of the western part broke off and fell to the northern end of the split, almost completely closing the split at that end. This segment alone weighs around four tons.[3]
[edit] The Legend
There are several legends surrounding the stone, but almost all of them feature the stone revealing whether a person is lying.
- One version of the story tells of a disloyal young wife and her husband. The husband began to suspect that his wife and the man who was her lover may have had some indecent relationship. He took her out to the Answering Stone and told her to say whether or not she had betrayed him. The woman, having expected this, had secretly arranged for her lover to stand at the peak of a nearby mountain, where he would be in sight from their place at the stone, but far enough away that her husband would not recognize him. She said, "I had no more to do with the man that my husband suspects than with that man standing at the summit of this mountain!" The husband asked the stone if his wife was telling the truth, to which the stone replied that she was, but the truth was bitter. Since the stone had never before encountered such a misleading and deceitful form of trickery, only having been exposed to outright honesty or a simple lie, it was horrified with the woman's wickedness and split in half.
