the Black Madonnas, such as the one in the commune of La Tronche, near Grenoble. The story there goes that the statue of the Virgin, consisting of black wood, was discovered in a vineyard; and, though the original has been since lost and superseded by one of blackened stone, the sanctuary of the Vierge Noire is very popular, pilgrimages being made to it on Whit-Monday by persons, especially of the fair sex, who wish to be married; if the Virgin is favourable, the desired marriage takes place, we are told, within the year.[1]
Besides Matres and Virgines, Gaulish paganism had also its Dominae, who cannot have been very different from them: thus a tablet found at Saint-Innocent, near Chambéry in Savoie, reads:[2] Dominis exs voto s(olvit) l(ibens) m(erito) M. Carminius Magnus pro salute sua et suorum. Lastly, a Gaulish word which may possibly be the equivalent of this Dominis is used in an interesting inscription found at Aix-les-Bains, in Piedmont, which reads as follows:[3] Comedovis Augustis M. Helvius Severi Fil(ius) Iuventius ex voto. No other monument in honour of the Comedovae is known except one near Cologne, on which the dative has been read both Comedovibus and Comedonibus.[4] In either case we have a common stem comed-, which is also that of the Old Irish word coimdiu or comdiu, genitive comdeth, which is found mostly applied to God: in modern Irish it is superseded by tighearna, 'lord.' It has been analysed con-med-, in which med would be of the same origin as Welsh 'meᵭiant,' 'power, authority,
