It was natural that when Christianity reached Gaul, where the native spirits of woods and wells had acquired the name of _Fata_, these minor goddesses should survive the official heathen religion. The temples of the high gods were overthrown, or turned into churches, but who could destroy all the woodland fanes of the Fata, who could uproot the dread of them from the hearts of peasants? Saints and Councils denounced the rural offerings to fountains and the roots of trees, but the secret shame-faced worship lasted deep into the middle ages[28]. It is conjectured by Maury, as by Walckenaer (_Lettres sur les Contes de Fees_; Paris, 1826), that the functions of prophetic Gaulish Maidens and Druidesses were confused with those of the Fairies. Certainly superstitious ideas of many kinds came under the general head of belief in _Fata_, _Faes_, _Fadae_, and the _Fees_ of the forest of Broceliande. The _Fees_ answered, as in the _Sleeping Beauty_, to Greek _Moirai_ or Egyptian _Hathors_[29]. They nursed women in labour: they foretold the fate of children. It is said that when a Breton lady was giving birth to a child, a banquet for the _Fees_ was set in the neighbouring chamber[30]. But, in popular superstition, if not in Perrault's tales, the _Fees_ had many other attributes. They certainly inherited much from the pre-Christian idea of Hades. In the old MS. _Prophesia Thomae de Erseldoun_[31] the subterranean fairy-world is the under-world of pagan belief. In the mediaeval form of Orpheus and Eurydice (_Orfeo and Heurodis_), it is not the King of the Dead, but the king of Fairy that carries off the minstrel's bride. Fairyland, when Orpheus visits it, is like Homer's Hades. '_And sum thurch the bodi hadde wounde Wives ther lay on childe bedde Sum dede and sum awedde._' In the same way Chaucer calls Pluto 'King of Fayrie,' and speaks of 'Proserpine and all her fayrie,' in the _Merchant's Tale_. Moreover Alison Pearson, when she visited Elfland, found there many of the dead, among them Maitland of Lethington, and one of the Buccleughs. For all this dealing with fairies and the dead was Alison burned (Scott, _Border Minstrelsy_, ii. 137-152).