Celebrity endorsement is not only important today. The visit of perhaps the most popular novelist of the day, Sir Walter Scott (The Waverley Novels, Ivanhoe) was to further spread the fame of the Stone. Despite being lame from birth, he managed the climb, as the following extract from his biography shows:
“Having crossed the hills from Killarney to Cork, where a repetition of the Dublin reception---corporation honours, deputations of the literary and scientific societies, and so forth---awaited him, he gave a couple of days to the hospitality of this flourishing town, and the beautiful scenery of the Lee; not forgetting an excursion to the groves of Blarney, among whose shades we had a right mirthful picnic. Sir Walter scrambled up to the top of the castle, and kissed, with due faith and devotion, the famous Blarney stone.”
It left a lasting impression. When a Frenchman tried to bamboozle Scott the following year, Sir Walter was quick to point out in his Journal, “All this jargon I answer with corresponding blarney of my own, for "have I not licked the black stone of that ancient castle?" As to French, I speak it as it comes...”