Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions

2i6 Old Irish Religions.
tradition among the people connecting these nnonuments
with the Druids. They were simply regarded as places of
pagan worship,"
Most persons may agree with Rivett-Carnac— " It seems
hardly improbable that the ruins in Europe are the remains
of that primitive form of worship which is known to have
extended at one time over a great portion of the globe."
Not a few have detected in these monuments remnants of
the old Phallic worship,—some illustrating the male principle,
and others symbolizing the female. Dudley's Symbolism
detects the worship of the former in the circle, and the
female in the quadrangular.
Others would see the feminine
in the circular, and the masculine in the standing stone.
Astronomy, some think, furnishes a solution. The circle
of 12 stones, or any multiple of 12, might represent the
constellations, as 19 would suit a lunar period. Dr.
Kenealy, a proficient in mystic studies, wrote— " The
Druidical temples called Ana-mor were composed of 48
stones, denoting the numbers of the old constellations,
with a Kebla of 9 stones near the circumference, on the
inside, to represent the sun in its progress through the
Signs."
We may accept the dictum of Dr. Clark, that the stone
circles were the temples of the British Isles ;
that down
to the Reformation the general name in Gaelic for a
church was Teampuil, and is still applied to the old Culdee
churches of the Outer Hebrides. Forlong says, " In such
monuments as these you see the very earliest idea of the
temple." The columns took the place of tree-stems ;
and?
later on, became circular or solar forms.
St. Martin of Tours mentions "a turreted fabric of
highly-polished stones, out of which rose a lofty Coney
This had relation to Phallic superstition. The worship of
stones was expressly forbidden by the Council of Nantes