Page:Book of the Riviera.djvu/239

Rh "His first food was the sacred meal, his earliest sight the sacred candles, and the family gods growing black with holy oil. He saw his mother pale at her prayers before the holy stone, and he, too, would be lifted by his nurse to kiss it in his turn." (Cont. Symmachum.)

It has been so tough that it is not extirpated yet. In 1877 a correspondent of the Society of Anthropology at Paris wrote about the worship as still prevailing in the valleys of the Pyrenees.

"One comes across these sacred stones most usually near fountains. They are rough blocks of porphyroid, or amphibolite granite, left on the mountain side by glacial action. They are almost invariably shapeless, and rarely present any features that can distinguish them from other great stones strewn about. One might pass them by unnoticed but for the local traditions that attach to them and the veneration with which they are regarded by the natives. In vain do the priests preach against them. They have utterly failed to drive the superstition from the hearts of their people. In vain do they get them smashed up secretly, in hopes of thereby destroying these vestiges of paganism; especially do they use their efforts against such as serve as meeting-places to young men and girls. The natives, when they come on the workmen engaged in the destruction, break out into riot, and stop the work. When they cannot do this, then they collect the fragments, replace them, and continue to surround them with veneration. It is necessary to disperse the débris of the Holy Stone to put an end to the cult; but even then, the place where it stood is regarded as sacred, and sometimes the clergy plant a cross there, as the only means of turning the traditional reverence of the spot into a new direction."

Whether this religion of the black stone of Antibes goes back to Phœnician or to Ligurian religion one