In Vol. v., p. 121. of "N. & Q.," there is an interesting 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 history and
manners of its people teem with interesting 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 remaining 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 _vaen_), stone. See _Essai sur les Antiquités du
Département du Morbihan_, par J. Mahé, Vannes, 1825, where much curious
information on the subject 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 represent 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 immediate 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 institute 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 de Liesse," which are
all built on spots where, as M. de Freminville says in his _Antiquités du
Finisterre_, p. 106., "the Celts worshipped a divinity which united the
attributes of Cybele and Venus." And Souvestre, in his _Derniers Bretons_,
vol. i. p. 264., tells us that there still exists near the town of
Tréguier, 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 worship remained even avowedly to
a very much more recent period in Brittany. "It is well known," {536} says
De Freminville, in his _Antiquités des Côtes-du-Nord_, p. 31., "that
idolatry was still exercised in the Isle of Ushant, and in many parishes of
the diocese of Vannes, in the seventeenth century. And even at the present
day," he adds, "how many traces of it do we find in the superstitious
beliefs of our peasants!"
Many of these notions still so prevalent in the remoter districts of that
remote province, seem to point to nearly obliterated indications of a
connexion between these "peulvans" or pillar-stones, and the zodiacal forms
of worship, which the Druids are known to have, more or less exoterically,
practised. Thus it is believed in many localities that a "menhir" in the
neighbourhood _turns on its axis at midnight_. (Mahé, _Essai sur les Antiq.
du Morbihan_, p. 229.) In other cases the peasantry make a practice of
specially visiting them on the eve of St. John, _i. e._ at the summer
solstice.
Various other remnants of the ideas or practices inculcated by the ancient
faith may be traced in usages and superstitions still prevalent, and,
without such a key to their explanation, meaningless. With such difficulty
did the new supplant the old religion. Many curious illustrations may be
found in Brittany of the means adopted by the priests of the new faith to
steal, as it were, for their own emblems the adoration which all their
efforts were ineffectual to turn from its ancient objects, in the manner
mentioned by the writer in the _Archæologia_, cited by SIR J. E. TENNENT in
his Note. Thus we find "menhirs" with crosses erected on their summits, and
sculptured on their sides. See _Notions Historiques, etc. sur le Littoral
du Département des. Côtes-du-Nord_, par M. Habasque: St. Brieuc, 1834, vol.
iii. p. 22.
In conclusion, I may observe that this worship prevailed also in Spain--,
doubtless, throughout Europe--inasmuch as we find the Eleventh and Twelfth
Councils of Toledo warning those who offered worship to stones, that they
were sacrificing, to devils.