The Church of St. Martin’s is called St. Martin-de-la-Bellouse or Beilleuse, a name which an adjoining property bears to this day. The meaning of this word “Bellouse” or “Beilleuse” is unknown; but if, as some have asserted, the early inhabitants of the British Isles worshipped a deity of the name of Bel, it is not impossible that there may have been some female divinity, with a name derived from the same source. It is certainly somewhat remarkable that two stones, so very similar in character, should exist in connection with two churches in the same island, and that one of them should have been found in so singular a position. One is tempted to believe that both churches may have been built on spots which had previously been set apart as places of heathen worship, and that in the case of Ste. Marie-du-Castel the idol had been defaced and buried in the earth to put a stop to the adoration paid to it. It is well known that up to the end of the seventeenth century the inhabitants of a district in the Department du Morbihan, in Brittany, adored with superstitious and obscene rites a rude stone image commonly known as “La Vénus de Quinipilly,” and which was certainly not a Christian image. May not the stones here described have served also as objects of worship? The substitution of the Blessed Virgin for a female divinity is what one may reasonably suppose to have taken place, and the continuance of superstitious practices in connection with the idol may have led to its defacement and concealment below the floor of the sacred edifice.[64] [64] The Antiquarian Society. Proceedings 1879. EDITOR’S NOTES. This old figure is still regarded with peculiar affection by the people of St. Martin’s. “_La Gran’mère du Chimquière_,”--“the Grandmother of the Churchyard,”--they call it, though I have heard one or two very old people call it “St. Martin,” evidently regardless of sex, regarding it as the patron saint of the parish. Undoubtedly superstitious reverence used to be paid to it to within comparatively recent times, which probably accounts for the churchwarden wishing to have it removed. An old Miss Fallaize, aged eighty, told me that when she was a child the “old people” had told her that it was “lucky” to place a little offering of fruit, flowers, or even to spill a little drop of spirits in front of it, for it was holy--“c’était une pierre sainte” as she expressed it; and an old man named Tourtel, well over eighty, said that when he was a boy it was feared--“on la craignait” much more than they do now.