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Notes.

STONE PILLAR WORSHIP.

In Vol. v., p. 121. of "N. & Q.," there is an interesting note on this subject by Sir J. Emerson Tennent, which he concludes by observing that "it would be an object of curious inquiry, if your correspondents could ascertain whether this (the superstitious veneration of the Irish people for such stones) be the last remnant of pillar worship now remaining in Europe." I am able to assure him that it is not. The province of Brittany, in France, is thickly studded with stone pillars, and the history and manners of its people teem with interesting and very curious traces of the worship of them. In fact, Brittany and Breton antiquities must form the principal field of study for any one who would investigate or treat the subject exhaustively.

A list of the principal of these pillars still remaining may be found in the note at p. 77. of the first vol. of Manet's Histoire de la Petite Bretagne: St. Malo, 1834. But abundant notices of them will be met with in any of the numerous works on the antiquities and topography of the province. They are there known as "Menhirs," from the Celtic maen, stone, and hirr, long; or "Peulvans," from peul, pillar, and maen (changed in composition into vaen), stone. See Essai sur les Antiquités du Département du Morbihan, par J. Mahé, Vannes, 1825, where much curious information on the subject may be found. This writer, as well as the Chevalier de Freminville, in his Monuments du Morbihan, Brest, 1834, p. 16., thinks that these menhirs, so abundant throughout Brittany, may be distinguished into three classes: 1. Those intended as sepulchral monuments; 2. Those erected as memorials of some great battle, or other such national event; and 3. Those intended to represent the Deity, and which were objects of worship. I have little doubt that these gentlemen are correct in the conclusions at which they have arrived in this respect. But it is curious to find both of them—men unquestionably of learning, and of widely extended and varied reading—considering the poems of Ossian as indisputably authentic, and quoting from them largely as from unquestioned documents of historic value.

The largest "menhir" known to be in existence—if, indeed, it can still be said to be so—is that of Locmariaker, a commune of the department of Morbihan, a little to the south of Vannes. This vast stone, before it was thrown down and broken into four pieces—its present condition—was fifty-eight French feet in length. Its form, when entire, was that of a double cone, so that its largest diameter was at about the middle of its length. It has been calculated to weigh more than four hundred thousand French pounds. In its immediate neighbourhood is a very large specimen of the "Dolmens" or druidical altars on which victims were sacrificed.

As to the question when the worship of these stones ceased, my own observations of the manners and habits of the people there, some fifteen years since, would lead me to say that it had not then ceased. No doubt such an assertion would be indignantly repelled by the clergy, and perhaps by many of the peasantry themselves. The question, however, if gone into, would become a subtle one, turning on another, as to what is to be deemed worship. And we all know that the tendency of unspiritual minds to idolatry has led the priesthood of Rome to institute verbal distinctions on this point, which open the door to very much that a plain unbiassed man must deem rank polytheism. My knowledge of the people in Italy enables me to affirm, with the most perfect certainty, that not only the peasantry very generally, but many persons much above that rank, do, to all intents and purposes, and in the fullest sense of the word, worship the Madonna, and believe that there are several separate and wholly distinct persons of that name. And that this worship is often as wholly Pagan in its nature as in its object, is curiously proved by the fact, which brings us back again to Brittany, that in many instances in that province we find chapels dedicated to "Notre Dame de la Joye," and "Notre Dame de Liesse," which are all built on spots where, as M. de Freminville says in his Antiquités du Finisterre, p. 106., "the Celts worshipped a divinity which united the attributes of Cybele and Venus." And Souvestre, in his Derniers Bretons, vol. i. p. 264., tells us that there still exists near the town of Tréguier, a chapel dedicated to Notre Dame de la Haine; that it would be a mistake to suppose that the people have ceased to believe in a deity of hate, and that persons may still be seen skulking thither to pray for the gratification of their hatred.

Sir J. Emerson Tennent quotes a passage from Borlase, in which he says, speaking of this stone-worship among the Cornish, a people of near kin to the Armorican Bretons, that it might be traced by the prohibitions of councils through the fifth and sixth, and even into the seventh century. I find a council, held at Nantes in 658, ordering that the stones worshipped by the people shall be removed and put away in places where their worshippers cannot find them again; a precaution which the history of some of these stones in Brittany shows to have been by no means superfluous. But the usage may be traced by edicts seeking to restrain it to a later period than this. For in the Capitulaires of Charlemagne (Lib. x. tit. 64.), he commands that the abuse of worshipping stones shall be abolished.

There can be no doubt, however, that this worship remained even avowedly to a very much more recent period in Brittany. "It is well known,"

says De Freminville, in his Antiquités des Côtes-du-Nord, p. 31., "that idolatry was still exercised in the Isle of Ushant, and in many parishes of the diocese of Vannes, in the seventeenth century. And even at the present day," he adds, "how many traces of it do we find in the superstitious beliefs of our peasants!"

Many of these notions still so prevalent in the remoter districts of that remote province, seem to point to nearly obliterated indications of a connexion between these "peulvans" or pillar-stones, and the zodiacal forms of worship, which the Druids are known to have, more or less exoterically, practised. Thus it is believed in many localities that a "menhir" in the neighbourhood turns on its axis at midnight. (Mahé, Essai sur les Antiq. du Morbihan, p. 229.) In other cases the peasantry make a practice of specially visiting them on the eve of St. John, i. e. at the summer solstice.

Various other remnants of the ideas or practices inculcated by the ancient faith may be traced in usages and superstitions still prevalent, and, without such a key to their explanation, meaningless. With such difficulty did the new supplant the old religion. Many curious illustrations may be found in Brittany of the means adopted by the priests of the new faith to steal, as it were, for their own emblems the adoration which all their efforts were ineffectual to turn from its ancient objects, in the manner mentioned by the writer in the Archæologia, cited by Sir J. E. Tennent in his Note. Thus we find "menhirs" with crosses erected on their summits, and sculptured on their sides. See Notions Historiques, etc. sur le Littoral du Département des. Côtes-du-Nord, par M. Habasque: St. Brieuc, 1834, vol. iii. p. 22.

In conclusion, I may observe that this worship prevailed also in Spain—, doubtless, throughout Europe—inasmuch as we find the Eleventh and Twelfth Councils of Toledo warning those who offered worship to stones, that they were sacrificing, to devils.

T. A. T.

Florence, March, 1854.

SOMERSETSHIRE FOLK LORE.

1. All texts heard in a church to be