ruses of the
pagans, i.e. their orgiastic cults, are not to be practised.
Tempest-raisers are not to ply their diabolical craft.[571] These
denunciations, of course, were not without their effect, and legend told
how the spirits of nature were heard bewailing the power of the
Christian saints, their mournful cries echoing in wooded hollows,
secluded valleys, and shores of lake and river.[572] Their power, though
limited, was not annihilated, but the secrecy in which the old cults
often continued to be practised gave them a darker colour. They were
identified with the works of the devil, and the spirits of paganism with
dark and grisly demons.[573] This culminated in the mediaeval witch
persecutions, for witchcraft was in part the old paganism in a new
guise. Yet even that did not annihilate superstition, which still lives
and flourishes among the folk, though the actual worship of
nature-spirits has now disappeared.

* * * * *

Perhaps the most important object in nature to the early Celts as to
most primitive folk was the moon. The phases of the moon were apparent
before men observed the solstices and equinoxes, and they formed an easy
method of measuring time. The Celtic year was at first lunar--Pliny
speaks of the Celtic method of counting the beginning of months and
years by the moon--and night was supposed to precede day.[574] The
festivals of growth began, not at sunrise, but on the previous evening
with the rising of the moon, and the name _La Lunade_ is still given to
the Midsummer festival in parts of France.[575] At Vallon de la Suille a
wood on the slope where the festival is held is called _Bois de la
Lune_; and in Ireland, where the festival begins on the previous
evening, in the district where an ascent of Cnoc Aine is made, the
position of the moon must be observed. A similar combination of sun and
moon cults is found in an inscription at Lausanne--_To the genius of the
sun and moon._[576]

Possibly sun festivals took the place of those of the moon. Traces of
the connection of the moon with agriculture occur in different regions,
the connection being established through the primitive law of
sympathetic magic. The moon waxes and wanes, therefore it must affect
all processes of growth or decay. Dr. Frazer has cited many instances of
this belief, and has shown that the moon had a priority to the sun in
worship, e.g. in Egypt and Babylon.[577] Sowing is done with a waxing
mo