Before men discovered the use of metals, or the method of cutting rocks, they worshipped unhewn stones; and if the authenticity of Sanchoniathon is to be accepted, they consecrated pillars to the fire and the wind before they had learned to hunt, to fish, or to harden bricks in the sun. (Sanchon. in Cory's Ancient Fragments, pp. 7, 8.) From Chna, "the first Phœnician" as he is called by the same remote authority, the Canaanites acquired the practice of stone-pillar worship, which prevailed amongst them long before:
"Jacob took the stone that he had put for his pillow, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it and called the name of the place Bethel, saying, this stone which I have set up for a pillar shall be God's house."
Gen. xxviii. 18. 22.
The Israelites were repeatedly ordered to destroy these stone idols of the Canaanites, to overthrow their altars, and "break their pillars" (Deut. vii. 5.; xii. 3.). And when the Jews themselves, in their aberrations, were tempted to imitate their customs, Moses points a sarcasm at their delusion:—
"Where are their gods; their rock in whom they trusted! How should one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, except their rock had sold them?"
Ib. xxxii. 30. 37.
From Jacob's consecration of his stone pillar, and the name Bethel which he conferred upon it (which, in Phœnician, signified the house of God), were derived the Bætylia, Βαιτύλια or Βαιτύλοι, the black stones worshipped in Syria and Asia Minor, in Egypt, and in Greece before the time of Cecrops, under the names of Cybele and of Saturn, who is fabled to have swallowed one of them when he intended to have devoured his son Jupiter. Even in the refined period of Grecian philosophy, the common people could not divest themselves of the influence of the ancient belief; and Theophrastus gives it as the characteristic of the "superstitious man," that he could not resist the impulse to bow to these mysterious stones, which served to mark the confluence of the highways. From Asia Minor pillar worship was carried to Italy and Gaul, and eventually extended to Germany, where the trunks of trees occasionally became the substitute for stone. From the same original the Arabs borrowed the Kaaba, the black stone, which is still revered at Mecca; and the Brahmans a more repulsive form, under which the worship now exists in Hindostan. Even in early times the reverence of these stones took a variety of forms as they were applied to mark the burial-place of saints and persons of distinction, to define contested boundaries, and to commemorate great events (vide Joshua iv. 5.; xxiv. 26.); and perhaps many of the stones which have now a traditional, and even historical celebrity in Great Britain, such as the "Lia Fail" of Tara, the great "Stone of Scoon," on which the Scottish kings were crowned; the "King's Stone" in Surrey, which served a similar office to the Saxons; the "Charter Stone" of Inverness; the "Leper's Stone" of Ayr; the "Blue Stone" of Carrick; the "Black Stone" of Iona, and others, may have acquired their later respect from their earlier sanctity.
There appear to be few countries in the old world which do not possess some monuments of this most remote idolatry; but there is none in which they would seem to be so abundant as on the western extremity of Europe, in Cornwall, and especially in the islands and promontories from the Land's End to Caithness and the Orkneys. In the latter the worship of stone pillars continued to so recent a period, that one is curious to know when it actually disappeared, and whether there still exist traces of it in any other locality, similar to that pointed out by the Earl of Roden at Inniskea.
My own acquaintance with the subject is very imperfect; but, so far as my recollection serves, the following references may direct attention to interesting quarters.
Scheffer, who published his Description of Lapland in 1673, states that the practice of stone-pillar worship then existed there, and that Storjunkar, one of the deities of Scandinavian mythology, was—