Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions

1 66 Old hdsh Re It onions.
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part of his visitor, who had been entranced by a splendid
illustration of serpent worship, loudly exclaimed, " I will
show you something." He soon returned with a stone
image, some two feet high, bearing the rough lineaments
of a female, but with the legs being serpents crossed.
Epiphanius vehemently attacked a Gnostic idol of his
day ;
saying, " Yea, even his legs are an imitation of the
serpent, through which the Evil One spake and deceived
Eve."
Governor Pownall, last century, traced Irish idols to
Carthaginian intercourse ; " rather," said he, " than to the
Celtic Druidical theology of the more ancient Irish ; for
though thea- symbolic idols are said to be covered with
gold and silver, yet they were but unhewn stones, and not
images containing any organized form." His account of
the find in the Tipperary Bog of Cullen was addressed to
the Society of Antiquaries in 1774.
"The fragment," said he, "which is said to be part of an
image found at the same time, is of a black wood, entirely
covered and plated with thin gold, and seems to have been
part of the breasts, the tet or nipple of which is radiated in
hammered or chased work, in lines radiating from a centre,
as is usual in the images of the sun ; and round the periphery,
or setting on of the breast, there are
like radiations
in a specific number, with other linear ornaments. There
is another fragment of the same kind of wood, which seems
to be a fragment of an Ammonian horn ;
there are in it
the golden studs or rivets by which it may be supposed to
have been plated with gold. The first account I had of
this image was that it was of a human form, with a lion's
face ;
then, that it was indeed biform, but of what sort not
specified. I have since been informed that the image,
whatever it was, was of a size sufficient to make a
gate-post."