plaques which were fastened to the walls of temples, or placed in
springs.[611] Leaden tablets with inscriptions were placed in springs by
those who desired healing or when the waters were low, and on some the
actual waters are hardly discriminated from the divinities. The latter
are asked to heal or flow or swell--words which apply more to the waters
than to them, while the tablets, with their frank animism, also show
that, in some cases, there were many elemental spirits of a well, only
some of whom were rising to the rank of a goddess. They are called
collectively _Niskas_--the Nixies of later tradition, but some have
personal names--Lerano, Dibona, Dea--showing that they were tending to
become separate divine personalities. The Peisgi are also appealed to,
perhaps the later Piskies, unless the word is a corrupt form of a Celtic
_peiskos_, or the Latin _piscus_, "fish."[612] This is unlikely, as fish
could not exist in a warm sulphurous spring, though the Celts believed
in the sacred fish of wells or streams. The fairies now associated with
wells or with a water-world beneath them, are usually nameless, and only
in a few cases have a definite name. They, like the older spirits of the
wells, have generally a beneficent character.[613] Thus in the fountains
of Logres dwelt damsels who fed the wayfarer with meat and bread, until
grievous wrong was done them, when they disappeared and the land became
waste.[614] Occasionally, however, they have a more malevolent
character.[615]

The spirit of the waters was often embodied in an animal, usually a
fish. Even now in Brittany the fairy dweller in a spring has the form of
an eel, while in the seventeenth century Highland wells contained fish
so sacred that no one dared to catch them.[616] In Wales S. Cybi's well
contained a huge eel in whose virtues the villagers believed, and terror
prevailed when any one dared to take it from the water. Two sacred fish
still exist in a holy well at Nant Peris, and are replaced by others
when they die, the dead fish being buried.[617] This latter act,
solemnly performed, is a true sign of the divine or sacred character of
the animal. Many wells with sacred fish exist in Ireland, and the fish
have usually some supernatural quality--they never alter in size, they
become invisible, or they take the form of beautiful women.[618] Any one
destroying such fish was regarded as a sacrilegious person, and
sometimes a hostile tribe killed and ate the