The lower walls are 15 feet, built with an angle tower by the McCarthys of Muskerry. It was subsequently occupied at one time by Cormac McCarthy, King of Munster, who is said to have supplied 4,000 men from Munster to supplement the forces of Robert the Bruce at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. Legend has it that the latter king gave half the Stone of Scone to McCarthy in gratitude. This, now known as the Blarney Stone, was incorporated in the battlements where it can now be kissed.
The stone was reputed to have been that mentioned in the Bible as "Jacob's pillow" and was supported to have been brought to Ireland by Jeremiah the Prophet. It was more likely to have been brought back during the Crusades which legend applies also to the Stone of Scone now at Westminster Abbey. Another tale was that McCarthy was given the story of the stone by an old woman whom he saved from drowning. This lady turned out to be a witch. As a reward, she told him the secret of a stone in the castle which would give the gift of eloquence in return for a kiss. Wherever the truth lies, tradition has it that once kissed the stones bestows the gift of eloquence.
The Earl of Leicester was commanded by Queen Elizabeth I to take possession of the castle. Whenever he endeavored to negotiate the matter McCarthy always suggested a banquet or some other form of delay, so that when the queen asked for progress reports a long missive was sent, at the end of which the castle remained untaken. The queen was said to be so irritated that she remarked that the earl's reports were all "Blarney."
The castle was eventually invested by Cromwell's general, Lord Broghill, who, planting a gun on Card Hill opposite and above the lake below the present mansion or new castle, succeeded in breaking the tower walls. However, when his men entered the keep, he found two old retainers, the main garrison had fled by the underground caves situated below the battlements known as the Badgers Caves. There are three passages, one to Cork, one to the lake and one seemingly to Kerry. At any rate, all had gone together with the reputed gold plate.
A subsequent owner of the estate endeavored to drain the lake at the bottom of which the plate was supposed to have thrown. A fortune was spent in vain. The estate was forfeited by Donogh McCarthy, 4th Earl of Clancarty, who supported James II in the Williamite Wars, the property passed to the Hollow Sword Blade Company who subsequently sold it to Sir James St. John Jefferyes, Governor of Cork in 1688.
His son, by the same name, was Minister Plenipotentiary for England at the court of Charles XII of Sweden and attended the Monarch at the Battle of Poltawa. He was rewarded with a full length portrait of the king and a ruby gilted sword which he subsequently sold to drain and improve all his land surrounding the castle. At the beginning of the 18th century during the reign of Queen Anne, Sir James St. John Jefferyes built a Georgian gothic house up against the keep of the castle as was then the custom all over Ireland.
At the same time the Jefferyes family laid out a landscape garden known as the Rock Close with a remarkable collection of massive boulders and rocks arranged around what seemed to have been druid remains from pre-historic times. Certainly, many of the yew trees and evergreen oaks are extremely ancient. In 1820 the house was accidentally destroyed by fire and the wings now form a picturesque adjunct to the keep, recently in the 1980s rearranged to give a better view of the keep.
The Jefferyes intermarried on 14th January 1846 with the Colthurst family of Ardrum, Inniscarra and Ballyvourney, Co. Cork, and Lukan, Co. Dublin. The early children dying Lady Colthurst decided to build the new castle in Scottish baronial style south of the present keep. This was competed in 1874 and has been the family home ever since.(quoted from Blarney Castle: A Souvenir Guide Book, Dublin: John Hinde Ltd.)
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