it
gods and deathless beings were fed. Similarly, as water cleansed and
invigorated, it was thought that some special kind of water had these
powers in a marvellous degree. Hence arose the tales of the Fountain of
Youth and the belief in healing wells. From the knowledge of the
nourishing power of food, sprang the idea that some food conferred the
qualities inherent in it, e.g. the flesh of divine animals eaten
sacramentally, and that gods obtained their immortality from eating or
drinking. This idea is widespread. The Babylonian gods had food and
water of Life; Egyptian myth spoke of the bread and beer of eternity
which nourished the gods; the Hindus and Iranians knew of the divine
_soma_ or _haoma_; and in Scandinavian myth the gods renewed their youth
by tasting Iduna's golden apples.

In Celtic Elysium tales, the fruit of a tree is most usually the food of
immortality. The fruit never diminishes and always satisfies, and it is
the food of the gods. When eaten by mortals it confers immortality upon
them; in other words, it makes them of like nature to the gods, and this
is doubtless derived from the widespread idea that the eating of food
given by a stranger makes a man of one kin with him. Hence to eat the
food of gods, fairies, or of the dead, binds the mortal to them and he
cannot leave their land. This might be illustrated from a wide range of
myth and folk-belief. When Connla ate the apple he at once desired to go
to Elysium, and he could not leave it once he was there; he had become
akin to its people. In the stories of Bran and Oisin, they are not said
to have eaten such fruit, but the primitive form of the tales may have
contained this incident, and this would explain why they could not set
foot on earth unscathed, and why Bran and his followers, or, in the tale
of Fiachna, Loegaire and his men who had drunk the ale of Elysium,
returned thither. In other tales, it is true, those who eat food in
Elysium can return to earth--Cormac and Cuchulainn; but had we the
primitive form of these tales we should probably find that they had
refrained from eating. The incident of the fruit given by an immortal to
a mortal may have borrowed something from the wide folk-custom of the
presentation of an apple as a gage of love or as a part of the marriage
rite.[1276] Its acceptance denotes willingness to enter upon betrothal
or marriage. But as in the Roman rite of _confarreatio_ with its savage
parallels, the underlying idea