June 10. 1854.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



535 



LONDON, SATURDAY, JUNE 10, 1854. 



STONE PILLAR WORSHIP. 



In Vol. v., p. 121. of "N. & Q.," there is an in- 

 teresting 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 his- 

 tory and manners of its people teem with interest- 

 ing 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 re- 

 maining 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 vaeri), stone. See Essai sur les Antiquites du 

 Depai-tement du Morbihan, par J. Mahe, Vannes, 

 1825, where much curious information on the sub- 

 ject 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 repre- 

 sent 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 imme- 

 diate 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 insti- 

 tute 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 deLiesse," which are all built on spots where, 

 as M. de Freminville says in his Antiquites du 

 Finisterre, p. 106., "the Celts worshipped a divinity 

 which united the attributes of Cybele and Venu3." 

 And Souvestre, in his Derniers Bretons, vol. i. 

 p. 264., tells us that there still exists near the town 

 of Treguier, 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 wor- 

 ship remained even avowedly to a very much more 

 recent period in Brittany. "It is well known," 



