Of the creation of the world no complete myth has survived, though from a gloss to the Senchus Mor we learn that the Druids, like the Br[=a]hmans, boasted that they had made sun, moon, earth, and sea—­a boast in keeping with their supposed powers over the elements.[775] Certain folk-beliefs, regarding the origin of different parts of nature, bear a close resemblance to primitive cosmogonic myths, and they may be taken as disjecta membra of similar myths held by the Celts and perhaps taught by the Druids.  Thus sea, rivers, or springs arose from the micturition of a giant, fairy, or saint, or from their sweat or blood.  Islands are rocks cast by giants, and mountains are the material thrown up by them as they were working on the earth.  Wells sprang up from the blood of a martyr or from the touch of a saint’s or a fairy’s staff.[776] The sea originated from a magic cask given by God to a woman.  The spigot, when opened, could not be closed again, and the cask never ceased running until the waters covered the earth—­a tale with savage parallels.[777] In all these cases, giant, saint, or fairy has doubtless taken the place of a god, since the stories have a very primitive facies.  The giant is frequently Gargantua, probably himself once a divinity.  Other references in Irish texts point to the common cosmogonic myth of the earth having gradually assumed its present form.  Thus many new lakes and plains are said to have been formed in Ireland during the time of Partholan and Nemed, the plains being apparently built up out of existing materials.[778] In some cases the formation of a lake was the result of digging the grave of some personage after whom the lake was then named.[779] Here we come upon the familiar idea of the danger of encroaching on the domain of a deity, e.g. that of the Earth-god, by digging the earth, with the consequent punishment by a flood.  The same conception is found in Celtic stories of a lake or river formed from the overflowing of a sacred well through human carelessness or curiosity, which led to the anger of the divinity of the well.[780] Or, again, a town or castle is submerged on account of the wickedness of its inhabitants, the waters being produced by the curse of God or a saint (replacing a pagan god) and forming a lake.[781] These may be regarded as forms of a Celtic deluge-myth, which in one case, that of the Welsh story of the ship of Nevyd, which saved Dwyvan and Dwyfach and a pair of all kinds of animals when Lake Llion overflowed, has apparently borrowed from the Biblical story.[782] In other cases lakes are formed from the tears of a god, e.g.  Manannan, whose tears at the death of his son formed three lochs in Erin.[783] Apollonius reports that the waters of Eridanus originated from the tears of Apollo when driven from heaven by his father.[784] This story, which he says is Celtic, has been clothed by him in a Greek form, and the god in question may have been Belenos, equated with Apollo.  Sometimes the formation of streams was ascribed to great hail-storms—­an evident mythic rendering of the damage done by actual spates, while the Irish myths of “illimitable sea-bursts,” of which three particular instances are often mentioned, were doubtless the result of the experience of tidal waves.