(Vol. v., p. 121.; Vol. vii., p. 383.)
_Stone Pillar Worship._--Sir J. E. TENNENT inquires whether any traces
of this worship are to be found in Ireland, and refers to a letter from
a correspondent of Lord Roden's, which states that the peasantry of the
island of Inniskea, off the coast of Mayo, hold in reverence a stone
idol called _Neevougi_. This word I cannot find in my Irish dictionary,
but it is evidently a diminutive, formed from the word _Eevan_
(Io[.m]ai[.g]), image, or idol: and it is remarkable that the scriptural
Hebrew term for idol is identical with the Irish, or nearly so--¤'WN¤
(_Eevan_), derived from a root signifying _negation_, and applied to the
vanity of idols, and to the idols themselves.
I saw at Kenmare, in the county of Kerry, in the summer of 1847, a
water-worn fragment of clay slate, bearing a rude likeness to the human
form, which the peasantry called _Eevan_. Its original location was in
or near the old graveyard of Kilmakillogue, and it was regarded with
reverence as the image of some saint in "the ould auncient times," as an
"ould auncient" native of Tuosist (the lonely place) informed me. In the
same immediate neighbourhood is a gullaune (+gallán+), or stone
pillar, at which the peasantry used "to give {414} rounds;" also the
curious small lakes or tarns, on which the islands were said to move on
July 8, St. Quinlan's [Kilian?] Day. (See Smith's _History of Kerry_.)
However, such superstitious usages are fast falling into desuetude; and,
whatever may have been the early history of Eevan, it is a sufficient
proof of no vestige of stone pillar worship remaining in Tuosist, that,
to gratify the whim of a young gentleman, some peasants from the
neighbourhood removed this stone fragment by boat to Kenmare the spring
of 1846, where it now lies, perched on the summit of a limestone rock in
the grounds of the nursery-house.