414 



NOTES AND QUEEIES. 



[No. 209L 



rounds ;" also the curious small lakes or tarns, on 

 which the islands wore said to move on July 8, St. 

 Quinlan's [Kilian ?] Day. (See Smith's History 

 of Kerry.') 



However, such superstitious usages are fast fall- 

 ing into desuetude ; and, whatever may have been 

 the early history of Eevan, it is a sufficient proof 

 of no vestige of stone pillar worship remaining in 

 Tuosist, that, to gratify the whim of a young gen- 

 tleman, some peasants from the neighbourhood 

 removed this stone fragment by boat to Kenmare 

 in the spring of 1846, where it now lies, perched 

 on the summit of a limestone rock in the grounds 

 of the nursery-house. J. L. 



Dublin. 



Idol Worship. — The islands of Inniskea, on the 

 north-west coast of Ireland, are said to be in- 

 habited by a population of about four hundred 

 human beings, who speak the Irish language, and 

 retain among them a trace of that government by 

 chiefs which in former times existetL in Ireland. 

 The present chief or king of Inniskea is an intel- 

 ligent peasant, whose authority is universally ac- 

 knowledged, and the settlement of all disputes is 

 referred to his decision. Occasionally they have 

 been visited by wandering schoolmasters, but so 

 short and casual have such visits been, that there 

 are not ten individuals who even know the letters 

 of any language. Though nominally Roman Ca- 

 tholics, these islanders have no priest resident 

 among them, and their worship consists in occa- 

 sional meetings at their chief's house, with visits 

 to a holy well. Here the absence of religion is 

 filled with the open practice of pagan idolatry; for 

 in the south island a stone idol, called in the Irish 

 Neevoitgi, has been from time immemorial reli- 

 giously preserved and worshipped. This god, in 

 appearance, resembles a thick roll of homespun 

 flannel, which arises from a custom of dedicating a 

 material of their dress to it whenever its aid is 

 sought : this is sewed on by an old woman, its 

 priestess, whose peculiar care it is. They pray to 

 it in time of sickness. It is invoked when a storm 

 is desired to dash some helpless ship upon the coast; 

 and, again, the exercise of its power is solicited in 

 calming the angry waves to admit of fishing. 



Such is a brief outline of these islanders and 

 their god ; but of the early history of this idol no 

 authentic information has yet been obtained. Can 

 any of your numerous readers furnish an account 

 of it? William Blood. 



Wickloa'. 



"blagueuk" and "blackguard." 



(Vol. vii., p. 77.) 



I cannot concur in opinion with Sir Emerson 

 •Tennent, who thinks he has a right to identify 



the sense of our low word hlagueur with that of 

 your lower one, blackguard. I allow that there is 

 some slight similitude of pronunciation between 

 the words, but I contend that their sense is per- 

 fectly distinct, or, rather, wholly different ; as dis- 

 tant, in fact, as is the date of their naturalisation 

 in our respective idioms. Your blackguard had al- 

 ready won a " local habitation and a name" under 

 the reigns of Pope and his immediate predecessor 

 Dryden. Of all living unrespectable characters 

 our own hlagueur is the youngest, the most inno- 

 cent, and the shyest. He is entirely of modern 

 growth. He has but lately emerged from the 

 soldier's barracks, the suttler's sliop, and the mess- 

 room. As a prolific tale-teller he amused the 

 leisure hours of superannuated sergeants and half- 

 pay subalterns. Ten or twelve years ago he had 

 not yet made his appearance in plain clothes ; he 

 is now creeping and winding his way with slow 

 and sure steps from his old haunts into some first- 

 rate coffee-houses and shabby-genteel drawing- 

 rooms, which Carlyle calls sham gentility. He 

 bears on his very brow the newest flunhy-stamp. 

 The poor young fellow, after all, is no villain ; he 

 has no kind of connexion with the horrid rascal 

 Sir Emerson Tennent alludes to — with the 

 blackguard. That he is a boaster, a talker, an 

 idiot, a nincompoop ; that he scatters " words, 

 words, words," as Polonius did of old ; that he is 

 bombastic, wordy, prosy, nonsensical, and a fool, 

 no one will deny. But he is no rogue, though he 

 utters rogueries and di-olleries. I^o one is justified 

 in slandering him. 



The blackguard is a dirty fellow in every sense 

 of the word — a. gredin (a cur), the true trans- 

 lation, by-the-bye, of the word blackguard. Vol- 

 taire, who dealt lai'gely in Billingsgate, was very 

 fond of the word gredin : 



" Je semble a trois gredins, dans leur petit cerveau. 

 Que pour etre imprimes et relies en veau," &c. 



The word blagueur implies nothing so contemp- 

 tuous or offensive as the word blackguard does. 

 The emptiness of the person to whom it applies is 

 very harmless. Its etymon blague (bladder, to- 

 bacco-bag), the pouch, which smoking voluptuaries 

 use to deposit their tobacco, is perfectly symbolic 

 of the inane, bombastic, windy, and long-winded 

 speeches and sayings of the blagueur. Every 

 French commercial traveller, buss-tooter, and Pa- 

 risian jarvy is one. When he deports himself with 

 modesty, and shows a gentlemanly tact in his pecu- 

 liar avocation, we call him a craqueur (a cracker). 

 " Ancient Pistol" was the king of blagueurs ; Fal- 

 staff, of craqueurs. I like our Baron de Crac, a 

 native of the land of white-liars and honey-tongued 

 gentlemen (Gascony). The genus craqueur is 

 common here : as it shoots out into a thousand 

 branches, shades, varieties, and modifications, ju- 

 dicial, political, poetical, and so on, it would be 



