or streams, or as demoniac beings
haunting lonely places. And even now, in French folk-belief, sun, moon,
winds, etc., are regarded as actual personages. Sun and moon are husband
and wife; the winds have wives; they are addressed by personal names and
reverenced.[566] Some spirits may already have had a demoniac aspect in
pagan times. The Tuatha Dea conjured up _meisi_, "spectral bodies that
rise from the ground," against the Milesians, and at their service were
malignant sprites--_urtrochta_, and "forms, spectres, and great queens"
called _guidemain_ (false demons). The Druids also sent forth
mischievous spirits called _siabra_. In the _Tain_ there are references
to _bocanachs_, _bananaichs_, and _geniti-glinni_, "goblins, eldritch
beings, and glen-folk."[567] These are twice called Tuatha De Danann,
and this suggests that they were nature-spirits akin to the greater
gods.[568] The _geniti-glinni_ would be spirits haunting glen and
valley. They are friendly to Cuchulainn in the _Tain_, but in the _Feast
of Bricriu_ he and other heroes fight and destroy them.[569] In modern
Irish belief they are demons of the air, perhaps fallen angels.[570]

Much of this is probably pre-Celtic as well as Celtic, but it held its
ground because it was dear to the Celts themselves. They upheld the
aboriginal cults resembling those which, in the lands whence they came,
had been native and local with themselves. Such cults are as old as the
world, and when Christianity expelled the worship of the greater gods,
younger in growth, the ancient nature worship, dowered with immortal
youth,

"bowed low before the blast
In patient deep disdain,"

to rise again in vigour. Preachers, councils, and laws inveighed against
it. The old rites continued to be practised, or survived under a
Christian dress and colouring. They are found in Breton villages, in
Highland glens, in Welsh and Cornish valleys, in Irish townships, and
only the spread of school-board education, with its materialism and
uninviting common sense, is forcing them at last to yield.

The denunciations of these cults throw some light upon them. Offerings
at trees, stones, fountains, and cross-roads, the lighting of fires or
candles there, and vows or incantations addressed to them, are
forbidden, as is also the worship of trees, groves, stones, rivers, and
wells. The sun and moon are not to be called lords. Wizardry, and
divination, and the leapings and dancings, songs and cho