Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions

as Domnach Crumdnibh, or Sunday of Black Crom; it was afterwards changed to St. Patrick's Sunday.

O'Beirne Crowe thinks it absurd to suppose that the golden idol of Mag Slecht was only a stone pillar; but "that the most ancient Irish idols, however, were of wood and stone is most probable, and. that some of these ancient idols would be continued through pure veneration, even after the introduction of metallurgy, is also not improbable."

In Richardson's Folly of Pilgrimage is the record of a wooden image, carved and painted like a woman, kept in the house of the O'Herlebys, in Ballyvourney, Cork Co. The sick sent for it as a means of cure, and sometimes sheep were offered to it with peculiar ceremonies.

The Gentleman's Magazine for 1742, notes "two silver images found under the ruins of an old tower." They were described as being three inches high, in armour, with an Osirian helmet and neck covering.

Hindoo-like images of brass have been several times dug up. They appear in Oriental garb, or in a short petticoat or kilt, with the fingers touching a forked beard. One of such, now in the Dublin Museum, was taken from beneath the root of a large tree in Roscommon. In that instance, the arms were crossed. The height of this brazen idol was five inches. It had once been gilt A metal idol, weighing twenty-four lbs., and fifteen inches high, was recovered from the soil at Clonmel, near the spot where another was seen, with a similar expression of face, and the hand holding something round.

A letter written to Pownall by the Rev. Mr. Armstrong, about 1750, has the story of an image found sixty years previously, in the bog of Cullen, Tipperary. It was a large wooden image. Mention is made that "little pins or pegs were stuck in different parts of it; and that Mr.

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