Besides many other miscellaneous taboos noticeable in the evidence, there is a place taboo which is prominent. Thus, if an Irishman cuts a thorn tree growing on a spot sacred to the fairies, or if he violates a fairy preserve of any sort, such as a fairy path, or by accident interferes with a fairy procession, illness and possibly death will come to his cattle or even to himself. In the same way, in Melanesia, violations of sacred spots bring like penalties: 'A man planted in the bush near Olevuga some coco-nut and almond trees, and not long after died,' the place being a spirit preserve;[213] and a man in the Lepers' Island lost his senses, because, as the natives believed, he had unwittingly trodden on ground sacred to Tagaro, and 'the ghost of the man who lately sacrificed there was angry with him'.[213] In this case the wizards were called in and cured the man by exorcisms,[213] as Irishmen, or their cows, are cured by the exorcisms of 'fairy-doctors' when 'fairy-struck' for some similar violation. The animistic background of place taboos in the Fairy-Faith is in these cases apparent. _Among Ancient Celts_ In the evidence soon to be examined from the recorded Fairy-Faith, we shall find taboos of various kinds often more prominent than in the living Fairy-Faith.[214] So essential are they to the character of much of the literary and mythological matter with which we shall have to deal in the following chapters, that at this point some suggestions ought to be made concerning their correct anthropological interpretation. Almost every ancient Irish taboo is connected with a king or with a great hero like Cuchulainn; and, in Ireland especially, all such kings and heroes were considered of divine origin, and as direct incarnations, or reincarnations of the Tuatha De Danann, the true Fairies, originally inhabitants of the Otherworld. (See our chapter vii.) As Dr. Frazer points out to have been the case among non-Celts, with whom the same theory of incarnated divinities has prevailed, royal taboos are to isolate the king from all sources of danger, especially from all magic and witchcraft, and they act in many cases 'so to say, as electrical insulators' to preserve him or heroes who are equally divine.[215]