In the stories of Lady Gregory, John Synge, Yeats, Lady Wilde, and various other chroniclers of Celtic legendry, we find explanations of many phenomena, accounts of diverse occurrences. Lady Wilde[190] (Speranza) tells of natural appearances, such as a great chasm which was opened to swallow a man who incurred the anger of God by challenging Him to combat for destroying his crops. A supernatural whirlwind caught up the blasphemer and hurled him into the chasm that yawned to receive him. Many of the aspects of nature are attributed to the activities of giants, and later of demons; as the piling up of cyclopean walls, massive breast-works of earth, or gigantic masses of rocks said to be the work of playful or irate giants. The titans were frolicsome and delighted in feats to show off. There is a large body of legends of diabolized nature, as the changing of the landscape by demons, the sulphurizing of springs, and the cursing of localities. [190] In _Ancient Legends and Superstitions of Ireland_. Many other aspects of nature are made the basis for supernatural folk-tales too numerous to mention. Stories of the enchanted bird, music, and water appear in various forms, and the droll-tellers of the Cornish country tell many stories of the weird associated with out-of-doors. The Celtic superstitions and tales have lived on through successive invasions and through many centuries have been told beside the peat fire. They have been preserved as an oral heritage or else in almost illegible manuscripts in antique libraries, from which they are taken to be put into literature by the Celtic patriots of letters. The sense of terror and of awe, a belief in the darker powers, as well as an all-enveloping feeling of beauty is a heritage of the Celtic mind. It is interesting to note the obstinacy of these pantheistic, druidic stories in the face of Irish Catholicism. In many other bodies of folk-supernaturalism in English we have similar legends of nature, as in the Hawaiian, the Indian, African, Canadian, Mexican stories, and elsewhere. But the material is so voluminous that one can do no more than suggest the field.