Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/690

670 of efforts made at different times to Christianize them. The Christians were satisfied at first to scratch rude crosses upon their faces. Sometimes, however, more regularity was first given to their shapes by rounding off their tops or marking rough panels on them, and adding to the cross other figures and inscriptions. Many monuments thus treated may be found in Morbihan. The crosses cut upon these stones, particularly in Brittany, generally have the four branches equal. They are Maltese crosses, furnished with feet or braces at the bottom, of very ancient forms—some seeming to be earlier than of the ninth century, and possibly with their ornaments too, dating from the Merovingian period. Some menhirs have been cut so as to give them a more or less regular form of a cross, and have curious designs sculptured in their faces in intaglio or relief, of certainly quite as remote an epoch.

More frequently a cross has simply been planted on a monolith, and instances of the kind are not rare in France. Of these, a cross on the Great Stone at La Rigandière, in the commune of Tour-Landy, (Maine-et-Loire), was erected as recently as 1862. These crosses are of stone or wood; a large wooden cross with a Christ on the Pierre de Champs Dolent—a regularly shaped stone more than twenty feet high—has been renewed several times. A number of menhirs dedicated to the Virgin or to saints have been adorned with statues. A menhir in the Isle of Hoëdic, Morbihan, thirteen feet high, which has become an object of pilgrimage, has a niche hollowed in one of its faces to accommodate a statue of the Virgin. The Pierre Fritte, in the department of Maine-et-Loire, has a niche containing an ancient statue of the Virgin in painted faïence, inclosed with an iron grating. A large painted wooden statue representing St. Peter, patron of the parish, was placed in 1878 on a granite block twenty-five feet high, in the parish of Pedernec. In the same department of Côtes-du-Nord is a stone picturesquely decorated with a wooden