Macauster — Temair Breg : Remains and Traditions of Tara. 255 



The sculpture carved in relief on the eastern face of the stone has been 

 insufficiently examined by Petrie and his followers, and Petrie's drawing 1 is 

 a very inadequate representation of it. It is, in truth, of extraordinary 

 interest. It represents a human figure with bowed legs crossed at the feet. 

 There are enormous projections at the sides of the head, the nature of which, 

 owing to the weathered condition of the monument, it is impossible clearly 

 to make out. But they have every appearance of being a pair of horns. 

 (See Plate VIII). 2 



A cross-legged, horned human figure can have but one meaning when 

 found in a Celtic region. It must represent the important deity which on one 

 of the famous Paris altars is named cernunnos. 



Cernunnos has all the barbaric characteristics of a very ancient, primitive 

 deity. He seems, indeed, to be an animal god arrested while in the very 

 process of " anthropomorphising." Several well-known representations of him 

 exist on the Continent, which, though differing in minor details, agree in 

 figuring the deity in a cross-legged, Buddha-like attitude, and in decking him 

 out with one or more massive torques. On the head are horns, usually of a 

 stag, but sometimes of a ram. The Temair relief agrees to some extent with 

 the Continental sculptures in the attitude, and apparently in the horns. I 

 could not feel so sure of the torque, owing to the weathered condition of the 

 stone. It is difficult to guard oneself against tricks of imagination in an 

 investigation of the kind ; so I will only say, with the utmost caution, that it 

 is not impossible that the figure actually has such a collar. 3 It is not a little 

 remarkable that the two torques which are now among the chief treasures of 

 the Pioyal Irish Academy Museum were found somewhere in the neighbour- 

 hood of this stone. 1 These gigantic ornaments, too large to be used by any 

 human being except as a girdle, 5 may well have been votive offerings to the 



' Tara, p. 176. 



- The figure, owing to its bad state, is a very difficult subject for the camera. The 

 photograph reproduced on Plate VIII is not very satisfactory, but it is the best of several 

 attempts. 



3 After the above words had been written, I put the observations which they contain 

 to the following test :— With Mr. Westropp I conducted to Temair a party of young friends 

 who had never been there before, had no previous knowledge of the stone in question, and 

 had never heard of Cernunnos or of his attributes. We asked them to describe, without 

 any assistance or hints from us, what they saw in the sculpture. After remarking on the 

 obvious features, eyes, mouth, &c., one of them said " he has very large ears .... or are 

 they horns? .... and he seems to have something round his neck." Mr. Armstrong 

 has called my attention to a note in Wilde's Beauties of the Boyne ami Blackwater ('2nd 

 Edn., 1850, p. 123), where the figure is described as having "something like horns upon 

 the head." * Tara. p. 181. 



3 Compare the girdle-torque worn by the figure of N'odens (Bathurst, / ■ • Park, 

 plate xiii). 



R.I. A, PROC. VOL. XXXIV, SECT. C. [86] 



