MacCulloch was cautious about what the Gran'mère had been. He noted a "confused idea" among the parishioners that it had once been an idol, and he set it beside the similar figure found buried in the Castel church chancel in 1878. He thought both churches might stand on old pagan sites, with the Blessed Virgin replacing an older female deity, and he compared the stones to the "Vénus de Quinipilly" in Brittany, which was worshipped into the seventeenth century.
What is not in doubt is how people treated the stone. Some of the oldest people in the parish simply called it "St Martin", "evidently regardless of sex", as though it were the parish saint. The offerings were small: fruit, flowers, a splash of spirits. A stone face of the same type was found set over the door of a house at La Villette when a myrtle covering it blew down in a gale, and nobody could explain how it got there.
The Gran'mère still stands at the churchyard gate, with the churchwarden's break across her body, and she is still a popular stop for visitors, some of whom leave small offerings in the old way. The stone is a Neolithic or Bronze Age statue menhir, reshaped at some later date. This record covers the customs attached to her.
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