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venture to say, that our crom-leach is\a.corruption. of the Hebrew 
chemar-luach, “a burning or sacrificing stone; or table,’’—or, of 
crem-luach, ‘“‘ a cousecrated. stone, or altar.” (Levit., xxvii. 28. 
Numbers, xviii. 14. Josh. vi. 18.) The Druidic.crom-leach, like 
the Hebrew altar stone, was ponderous, rude, and unhewn... There 
are very large ones in the Isles of Aran. . In the west, of the county 
of Limerick, not far from Rathkeale, I have seen an immense one, 
placed horizontally, and supported, I imagine, by erect stones, 
sunk so deep in the earth as to escape observation. This huge 
stone could not, I think, weigh under thirty tons; and it must have 
been conveyed from a distance of several miles, nothing like it, in 
quality, being discoverable in the neighbouring quarries or mountains. 
If our Celtic ancestors had been quite so ignorant as they are repre- 
sented, it is strange that their acquaintance with mechanics enabled 
them to move; from place to place, masses so immense as to.aston- 
ish the modern observer. There is in Nivern parish, Pembroke- 
shire, a crom-leach, which is eighteen feet high and nine. broad 
towards the base; near it is a piece broken off, which seems to be 
of such weight as twenty oxen could not draw. . Another is to be 
seen in Poitiers, of the amazing circumference of sixty feet, erected 
on smaller stones ; but the French) could not account. for this ve- 
nerable monument.* The Gaulish antiquities are long since lost. 
In Jersey and the neighbouring islands, these altar stones are nu- 
merous. The oldest Irish for a priest is cruimthean, from thence 
crom-leach, and for priesthood cruimthead: sagart is evidently from 
sacerdos. 
The artificial and sacred mount, on which the altar was erected, 
* La pierre levée de Poitiers a soixante pieds de tour, et elle est posée sur cing autres pierres, 
sans qu'on sache non plus ni pourquoi, ni comment.. Chevereau, Memoires D' Angleterre, p. 
330. 
