228 Gray — Irish Cromlechs. 



other erect ones, and leaning, with a little declivity in some 

 places, on those pitched supporters, which posture, for some 

 now unaccountable reasons, they seem to have affected, and 

 were and are to this day vulgarly called by the name of 

 ' Cromlech,' either from their bending position, which is gene- 

 rally believed, or rather (that bending posture being not always 

 to be found in everyone of those monuments, nor, indeed, 

 applicable to the idea and notion of ' Crom' in our language) 

 that these first men (I shall adventure to guess) carried the 

 name with them from Babel, as they did several other words, 

 and called it ' Caeraem-lech,' from the Hebrew ' Caerem-luach,' 

 a devoted stone or altar." 



In Owen Connellan's edition of the Four Masters* we have 

 the following note : — 



" The name Cromleac signifies the stone of Crom, and they 

 were so called from being used in the worship of Crom, one of 

 the deities of the Irish Druids, said to represent Fate ; or, 

 according to Lanigan and others, the god of fire, or the sun, 

 and sometimes called Crom Dubh, or Black Crom, and Crom 

 Cruach, signifying Crom of the Heap of Stones or Cairns, as 

 quoted by Lanigan from the Tripartite Life of St. Patrick ; 

 and the Idol of Crom Cruach, as stated in Lanigan and 

 O'Flaherty's Ogygia, quoting from the Four Masters, and also 

 in the Book of Invasions, by the O'Clerys, was destroyed by 

 St. Patrick in the temple of the Druids, on Magh Sleacht, in 

 Brefney, now Fenagh, in Leitrim ; and the last Sunday of 

 summer is still called Domhnach Chrom Duibh, or the Sunday 

 of Black Crom, being sacred to St. Patrick as the anniversary 

 commemorating the destruction of the idol. This is the real 

 origin of the name Cromleac, and not from the stones being in 

 a sloping position, as absurdly stated by some writers, and 

 derived fron the opinions of the common people." 



Sir John Lubbock says : — " Cromlech is derived from ' Crom,' 

 a circle, and ' lech,' a stone, and Dolmen from l daul, } a table, and 

 * maen' a stone ;" and, with reference to the terms, adds — "They 

 * The Four Masters. By Owen Connellan. Page 271. 



