Today, microscope slides discovered in the Hunterian Museum at the University of Glasgow in Scotland have finally shed light on the mysterious origins of this stone. Intern Becky Smith, while organizing the museum's handwritten catalog of 40,000 geological slides, noticed an entry referring to the Blarney Stone. The slide was acquired between 1850 and 1880 by Victorian mineralogist Matthew Forster Heddle, but he apparently did not provide any notes regarding it.
After museum geologists cut a sample thin and transparent enough for analysis, they discovered that the composition of the Blarney Stone is not bluestone, nor does it resemble the sandstone of the Stone of Scone. In fact, it is a 330-million-year-old Carboniferous limestone common in Ireland, containing fragments of brachiopod shells and bryozoan fossils. The specific details of its properties remain unclear.
John Faithfull, curator of the Hunterian Museum, stated that he has kissed the slice, but it is not yet clear whether he has acquired the legendary gift of "eloquence."