J. L.
Dublin.
Idol Worship.—The islands of Inniskea, on the north-west coast of Ireland, are said to be inhabited by a population of about four hundred human beings, who speak the Irish language, and retain among them a trace of that government by chiefs which in former times existed in Ireland. The present chief or king of Inniskea is an intelligent peasant, whose authority is universally acknowledged, and the settlement of all disputes is referred to his decision. Occasionally they have been visited by wandering schoolmasters, but so short and casual have such visits been, that there are not ten individuals who even know the letters of any language. Though nominally Roman Catholics, these islanders have no priest resident among them, and their worship consists in occasional meetings at their chief's house, with visits to a holy well. Here the absence of religion is filled with the open practice of pagan idolatry; for in the south island a stone idol, called in the Irish Neevougi, has been from time immemorial religiously preserved and worshipped. This god, in appearance, resembles a thick roll of homespun flannel, which arises from a custom of dedicating a material of their dress to it whenever its aid is sought: this is sewed on by an old woman, its priestess, whose peculiar care it is. They pray to it in time of sickness. It is invoked when a storm is desired to dash some helpless ship upon the coast; and, again, the exercise of its power is solicited in calming the angry waves to admit of fishing.
Such is a brief outline of these islanders and their god; but of the early history of this idol no authentic information has yet been obtained. Can any of your numerous readers furnish an account of it?
William Blood.
Wicklow.
"BLAGUEUR" AND "BLACKGUARD."
(Vol. vii., p. 77.)
I cannot concur in opinion with Sir Emerson Tennent, who thinks he has a right to identify the sense of our low word blagueur with that of your lower one, blackguard. I allow that there some slight similitude of pronunciation between the words, but I contend that their sense is perfectly distinct, or, rather, wholly different; as distant, in fact, as is the date of their naturalisation in our respective idioms. Your blackguard had already won a "local habitation and a name" under the reigns of Pope and his immediate predecessor Dryden. Of all living unrespectable characters our own blagueur is the youngest, the most innocent, and the shyest. He is entirely of modern growth. He has but lately emerged from the soldier's barracks, the suttler's shop, and the mess-room. As a prolific tale-teller he amused the leisure hours of superannuated sergeants and half-pay subalterns. Ten or twelve years ago he had not yet made his appearance in plain clothes; he is now creeping and winding his way with slow and sure steps from his old haunts into some first-rate coffee-houses and shabby-genteel drawing-rooms, which Carlyle calls sham gentility. He bears on his very brow the newest flunky-stamp. The poor young fellow, after all, is no villain; he has no kind of connexion with the horrid rascal Sir Emerson Tennent alludes to—with the blackguard. That he is a boaster, a talker, an idiot, a nincompoop; that he scatters "words, words, words," as Polonius did of old; that he is bombastic, wordy, prosy, nonsensical, and a fool, no one will deny. But he is no rogue, though he utters rogueries and drolleries. No one is justified in slandering him.