But why were the Tuatha Dé Danann associated with the mounds? If fairies or an analogous race of beings were already in pagan times connected with hills or mounds, gods now regarded as fairies would be connected with them. Dr. Joyce and O'Curry think that an older race of aboriginal gods or _síd-folk_ preceded the Tuatha Déa in the mounds.[208] These may have been the Fomorians, the "champions of the _síd_," while in _Mesca Ulad_ the Tuatha Déa go to the underground dwellings and speak with the _síde_ already there. We do not know that the fairy creed as such existed in pagan times, but if the _síde_ and the Tuatha Dé Danann were once distinct, they were gradually assimilated. Thus the Dagda is called "king of the _síde_"; Aed Abrat and his daughters, Fand and Liban, and Labraid, Liban's husband, are called _síde_, and Manannan is Fand's consort.[209] Labraid's island, like the _síd_ of Mider and the land to which women of the _síde_ invite Connla, differs but little from the usual divine Elysium, while Mider, one of the _síde_, is associated with the Tuatha Dé Danann.[210] The _síde_ are once said to be female, and are frequently supernatural women who run away or marry mortals.[211] Thus they may be a reminiscence of old Earth goddesses. But they are not exclusively female, since there are kings of the _síde_, and as the name _Fir síde_, "men of the _síde_," shows, while S. Patrick and his friends were taken for _síd_-folk. The formation of the legend was also aided by the old cult of the gods on heights, some of them sepulchral mounds, and now occasionally sites of Christian churches.[212] The Irish god Cenn Cruaich and his Welsh equivalent Penn Cruc, whose name survives in _Pennocrucium_, have names meaning "chief _or_ head of the mound."[213] Other mounds or hills had also a sacred character. Hence gods worshipped at mounds, dwelling or revealing themselves there, still lingered in the haunted spots; they became fairies, or were associated with the dead buried in the mounds, as fairies also have been, or were themselves thought to have died and been buried there. The haunting of the mounds by the old gods is seen in a prayer of S. Columba's, who begs God to dispel "this host (i.e. the old gods) around the cairns that reigneth."[214] An early MS also tells how the Milesians allotted the underground part of Erin to the Tuatha Déa who now retired within the hills; in other words, they were gods of the hills worshipped by the Milesians on hills.[215] But, as we shall see, the gods dwelt elsewhere than in hills.[216]