Represented by a stone. Neither do they use any art in polishing it; but take it as they find it upon the banks of lakes and rivers. In this shape they worship it as his image, and call it Kied kie jubmal, that is, the stone god."
Scheffer, Lapponia. Engl. London, 1751.
He adds that they select the unhewn stone, because it is in the form in which it was shaped by the hand of the Creator himself. The incident suggests a curious coincidence with the expressions of Isaiah (ch. lvii. v. 6.):
"Among the smooth stones of the stream is thy portion; they, they are thy lot: even to them hast thou poured a drink-offering; thou hast offered a meat-offering. Should I receive comfort in these?"
Joshua, too, selected the twelve stones with which he commemorated the passage of the Jordan from the midst of the river, where the priests' feet stood when they bore the ark across.
Martin, in his account of the Western Islands of Scotland in 1703 A.D., describes repeatedly the numerous pillar-stones which were then objects of respect in the several localities. And in one instance he states that an image which was held in veneration in one of the islands was swathed in flannel,—a practice which would thus seem to have served as a precedent for the priestess of Inniskea, as detailed by Lord Roden. In speaking of the island of Eriska, to the north of Barra, Martin says—
"There is a stone set up, near a mile to the south of St. Columbus's church, about eight foot high and two broad. It is called by the natives the bowing stone; for when the inhabitants had the first sight of the church, they set up this stone, and then bowed, and said the Lord's Prayer."
A Description of the Western Islands, p. 88.
But Borlase, who notices this passage in his Antiquities of Cornwall, gives a much more learned derivation of the name. He says:
"They call them bowing stones, as it seems to me, from the reverence shown them; for the Even Maschith, which the Jews were forbade to worship—(Leviticus xxvi. 1. 'neither shall ye set up any image of stone')—signifies really a bowing stone, and was doubtless so called because worshipped by the Canaanites."