Collectanea. 207
stone. Mr. G. Crampton (a good authority) told Otway that the Neevoge, or Knaveen, was reputed to still tempests, wreck vessels on Iniskea for the benefit of his devotees, and make the sea calm for their fishing. It was said to be a rudely-cut stone image clad in undyed flannel and it was dressed in a new suit on each New- Year's day. Once a pirate landed and burned the houses save that in which the Neevoge was kept. Indignant as its intervention, he searched for and found the image, and broke it with a sledge-hammer. Faith in its power over the elements was extinct, even in 1836, though it was still kissed and held in honour. Dr. Browne ^ heard that some years before 1895 a parish priest got the image, which was kept in a hole in the wall of a house, from its curator, an old woman, and threw it into the sea, but that he soon afterwards died. One man, who had seen it, said that it was not a statue, but a flat stone kept in a homespun bag. All agreed that the island had never known disaster or hunger till the neevoge was destroyed.
Philip Lavelle, " King of Iniskea," found an ancient bell in the ruins of St. Columba's Church on Iniskea, and I may add the curious fact that, on South Iniskea, the Rev. Dr. Lyons found graves in which lay skeletons with their faces downward and ashes on their feet. This is of great interest when we recall the cases in Ireland, in Iceland, in the South Sea Islands and elsewhere in which bodies were exhumed and reburied in this posture (or decapitated) to prevent their post-mortem activities against the survivors. Notably the case of King Eoghan Beul in this very province. -
T. J. Westropp.
^ Proc. Koy. Ir. Acad. vol. iii. ser. iii. p. 639.
-Having been buried upright in the rampart of a ring fort, A.D. 537, his spirit frustrated all raids from Ulster till the enemy ascertained the cause, removed his body to low ground, and Vniried him face downwards in wet soil. Cf. Stevenson, /« the South Si-as, chapter vi. where a vampire chief is exhumed and buried in the same wav.
