z, i. 229; Gregor, 21; Cambry, _Voyage dans le Finistere_,
i. 229.

[545] Le Braz, ii. 47; _Folk-Lore_, iv. 357; MacCulloch, _Misty Isle of
Skye_, 254; Sebillot, i. 235-236.

[546] Names of places associated with the great festivals are also those
of the chief pagan cemeteries, Tara, Carman, Taillti, etc. (O'Curry,
_MC_ ii. 523).

[547] _Rennes Dindsenchas_, _RC_ xv. 313-314.

[548] Cf. Frazer, _Adonis_, 134.

[549] Cf. Chambers, _Mediaeval Stage_, i. 250, 253.

[550] See Vigfusson-Powell, _Corpus Poet. Boreale_, i. 405, 419. Perhaps
for a similar reason a cult of the dead may have occurred at the
Midsummer festival.

[551] Miss Faraday, _Folk-Lore_, xvii. 398 f.

[552] Bede, _de Temp. Rat._ c. xv.

[553] Vigfusson-Powell, i. 419.

[554] Curtin, _Tales_, 157; Haddon, _Folk-Lore_, iv. 359; Le Braz, ii.
115 _et passim._

[555] Frazer, _Adonis_, 253 f.

CHAPTER XI.

PRIMITIVE NATURE WORSHIP.

In early thought everything was a person, in the loose meaning then
possessed by personality, and many such "persons" were worshipped--
earth, sun, moon, sea, wind, etc. This led later to more complete
personification, and the sun or earth divinity or spirit was more or
less separated from the sun or earth themselves. Some Celtic divinities
were thus evolved, but there still continued a veneration of the objects
of nature in themselves, as well as a cult of nature spirits or
secondary divinities who peopled every part of nature. "Nor will I call
out upon the mountains, fountains, or hills, or upon the rivers, which
are now subservient to the use of man, but once were an abomination and
destruction to them, and to which the blind people paid divine honours,"
cries Gildas.[556] This was the true cult of the folk, the "blind
people," even when the greater gods were organised, and it has survived
with modifications in out-of-the-way places, in spite of the coming of
Christianity.

S. Kentigern rebuked the Cambrians for worshipping the elements, which
God made for man's use.[557] The question of the daughters of Loegaire
also throws much light on Celtic nature worship. "Has your god sons or
daughters?... Have many fostered his sons? Are his daughters dear and
beautiful to men? Is he in heaven or on earth, in the sea, in the
rivers, in the mountains, in the valleys?"[558] The words suggest a
belief in divine beings filling heaven, earth, sea, air, hills, glens,
lochs, and rivers, and following human customs. A n