THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

But the far older nature-worship, the rude fetishism which dated back to ages long before history, had tougher and deeper roots.  The new religion could turn the nature-deities of this primeval superstition into devils, its spells into magic, its spae-wives into witches, but it could never banish them from the imagination of men; it had in the end even to capitulate to the nature-worship, to adopt its stones and its wells, to turn its spells into exorcisms and benedictions, its charms into prayers.

Atkinson/Parish