tural food which seems to support life, not only
in the case of Wang Chih, but also in that of Peter Claus. In another
Chinese tale two friends, wandering in the T'ien-t'ai mountains, are
entertained by two beautiful girls, who feed them on a kind of
haschisch, a drug made from hemp; and when they return they find that
they have passed seven generations of ordinary men in the society of
these ladies. Another Taoist devotee was admitted for a while into the
next world, where he was fed on cakes, and, as if he were a dyspeptic,
he received much comfort from having all his digestive organs removed.
After awhile he was sent back to this world, to find himself much
younger than his youngest grandson.[137]

Feasts in Fairyland occupy an unconscionable length of time. Walter Map,
writing in the latter half of the twelfth century, relates a legend
concerning a mythical British king, Herla, who was on terms of
friendship with the king of the pigmies. The latter appeared to him one
day riding on a goat, a man such as Pan might have been described to be,
with a very large head, a fiery face, and a long red beard. A spotted
fawn-skin adorned his breast, but the lower part of his body was exposed
and shaggy, and his legs degenerated into goat's feet. This queer little
fellow declared himself very near akin to Herla, foretold that the king
of the Franks was about to send ambassadors offering his daughter as
wife to the king of the Britons, and invited himself to the wedding. He
proposed a pact between them, that when he had attended Herla's wedding,
Herla should the following year attend his. Accordingly at Herla's
wedding the pigmy king appears with a vast train of courtiers and
servants, and numbers of precious gifts. The next year he sends to bid
Herla to his own wedding. Herla goes. Penetrating a mountain cavern, he
and his followers emerge into the light, not of sun or moon, but of
innumerable torches, and reach the pigmies' dwellings, whose splendour
Map compares with Ovid's description of the palace of the sun. Having
given so charming, and doubtless so accurate, a portrait of the pigmy
king, it is a pity the courtier-like ecclesiastic has forgotten to
inform us what his bride was like. He leaves us to guess that her
attractions must have corresponded with those of her stately lord,
telling us simply that when the wedding was over, and the gifts which
Herla brought had been presented, he obtained leave to depart, and set
out f