Many royal sites served as ceremonial locations for inauguration ceremonies. The prospective monarchs benefited from associating themselves with the ancient monuments and cultural significance of the royal sites. Inauguration ceremonies treated the prospective king's lands as "betrothed" and the rituals followed the pattern of a marital feast or "banais righe". The hilltop location of the inauguration sites offered panoramic views of the "betrothed" lands during the ceremony. Similar "feis" ceremonies in the early Middle Ages represented a direct marriage between the king and a goddess representing his lands. The significance of the marriage analogy declined in the later Middle Ages as kingship became more oriented toward ownership. Historical accounts of inauguration ceremonies are scarce and varied. One account suggests that the Cenél Conaill king mated with a mare, had it ritually slaughtered and boiled, and then bathed in its broth while his subjects drank from the bath. This accounts has been criticised as propaganda designed to make the Irish look barbarous or pagan but would be consistent with an Indo-European tradition of inaugural horse slaughter. Records of inaugurations in the later Middle Ages indicate that there was no set inauguration ceremony, but races, drinking liquor, reading poetry, processions representing the kings lands, and granting the White Wand or rod of sovereignty seem to have been basic parts of the ceremony. Some inaugurations included the rite of the "single shoe." Accounts document the use of the rite at the inaugurations of the Uí Choncobhair in the fifteenth century and the Uí Néill and Méig Uidhir in the sixteenth century. An account of the Choncobhair ceremony records the would-be king leaving a single slipper at his inauguration site to signify his claim. The next day, the Mac Diarmada, a vassal family with the role of "king-maker", placed a shoe on his lord's foot during the inauguration. In the Uí Néill ceremony, the would-be king sat on a stone chair on the inauguration hill and Uí Ágáin or, in later ceremonies, Ó Catháin, (king-makers for the Uí Néill), cast the shoe over the seated prince's head. The throwing of the shoe may have been evolved from a tradition of throwing a shoe for good luck. The shoe may also be related to the footprints carved in inaugural stones. Inauguration sites had a diversity of features, attesting to their diverse ancient origins.