intact, as among the Celtiberians and other peoples to the north of them, who at the time of full moon celebrated the festival of a nameless god, dancing all night before the doors of their houses.[579] The nameless god may have been the moon, worshipped at the time of her intensest light.  Moonlight dances round a great stone, with singing, on the first day of the year, occurred in the Highlands in the eighteenth century.[580] Other survivals of cult are seen in the practices of bowing or baring the head at new moon, or addressing it with words of adoration or supplication.  In Ireland, Camden found the custom at new moon of saying the Lord’s Prayer with the addition of the words, “Leave us whole and sound as Thou hast found us.”  Similar customs exist in Brittany, where girls pray to the moon to grant them dreams of their future husbands.[581] Like other races, the Celts thought that eclipses were caused by a monster attacking the moon, while it could be driven off with cries and shouts.  In 218 B.C. the Celtic allies of Attalus were frightened by an eclipse, and much later Christian legislation forbade the people to assemble at an eclipse and shout, Vince, Luna![582] Such a practice was observed in Ireland in the seventeenth century.  At an earlier time, Irish poets addressed sun and moon as divinities, and they were represented on altars even in Christian times.[583]

While the Celts believed in sea-gods—­Manannan, Morgen, Dylan—­the sea itself was still personified and regarded as divine.  It was thought to be a hostile being, and high tides were met by Celtic warriors, who advanced against them with sword and spear, often perishing in the rushing waters rather than retreat.  The ancients regarded this as bravado.  M. Jullian sees in it a sacrifice by voluntary suicide; M. D’Arbois, a tranquil waiting for death and the introduction to another life.[584] But the passages give the sense of an actual attack on the waves—­living things which men might terrify, and perhaps with this was combined the belief that no one could die during a rising tide.  Similarly French fishermen threaten to cut a fog in two with a knife, while the legend of S. Lunaire tells how he threw a knife at a fog, thus causing its disappearance.[585] Fighting the waves is also referred to in Irish texts.  Thus Tuirbe Tragmar would “hurl a cast of his axe in the face of the flood-tide, so that he forbade the sea, which then would not come over the axe.”  Cuchulainn, in one of his fits of anger, fought the waves for seven days, and Fionn fought and conquered the Muireartach, a personification of the wild western sea.[586] On the French coast fishermen throw harpoons at certain harmful waves called the Three Witch Waves, thus drawing their blood and causing them to subside.[587] In some cases human victims may have been offered to the rising waters, since certain tales speak of a child set floating on the waves, and this, repeated every seven years, kept them in their place.[588]