¹¹⁶Joyce, P. W. Wonders of Ireland and Other Papers on Irish Subjects. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1911, pp. 70-1.

Joyce argues, "...Petrie asserts that this was brought from the Mound of Hostages where the old writers place the Lia Fáil and that it is the Lia Fáil itself. Here we cannot go with him. For in the first place the identification of the real old Lia Fail with the present pillar stone is quite unsatisfactory and unconvincing. Fifty years ago I had a talk with one of the men who helped in the removal and I have good reason to believe that the pillar stone now on the Forradh was brought by the people in 1821, not as Petrie states writing many years after 1821 from the Mound of Hostages, which lies about 50 yards off, but from the bottom of the trench surrounding the Forradh itself, where it had been lying prostrate for generations. In the second place, the coronation stones used so generally by the Gaelic tribes all over Ireland and Scotland were comparatively small and portable like that now under the Coronation chair at Westminster, which is a flag 25 inches by 15 inches by 9 inches thick. But the present pillar stone at Tara is 12 feet long by nearly 2 feet in diameter. It would be very unsuitable for standing on during the ceremonies of installation and coronation, and seeing that the stone weighs considerably more than a ton it would be impracticable to bring it about as the legends say the Dedannans carried their Lia Fáil in their overland journeys in Scandinavia Scotland and Ireland and in their over sea voyages in their hide covered wicker boats. For even legends are consistent when dealing with ordinary everyday matters of common sense. No legend could be wild enough to tell us that the Dedannans brought with them in their wanderings lasting for generations the massive stone now standing on the Forradh."

In a 2018 paper, Grigory Bondarenko argued, "...there is clear evidence that the original Lia Fáil should not be associated with standing stones or even the conical stone now standing on Ráith na Ríg. A gloss on Fál in Baile in Scáil... and in the prose Dindshenchas... implies that the glossator possibly thought of a low and flat stone. Ó Broin and Carey have suggested that the Lia Fáil was a flagstone or a recumbent stone easy for a king of Tara to step upon and for his chariot to drive over." (Bondarenko, Grigory. "Lia Fáil and Other Stones: Symbols of Power in Ireland and Their Origins." Zeitschrift Für Celtische Philologie, www.academia.edu/38023004/.)

William Wilde proposed that the "real" Lia Fail was actually one of the two stones now identified as Blocc and Bluigne: "Perhaps the flat sculptured stone, latterly called the Cross of St. Adamnan, may have been it." (Wilde, W. R. The Beauties of the Boyne, and Its Tributary, the Blackwater. Dublin: J. McGlashan, 1849, pp. 105-6.)