ir behalf to the
king, some of the heroes fell and were left behind when their friends
were at last allowed to depart.[21] So far we see that the prohibition
and the danger we found extant in the Fairyland of modern folk-tales
apply also to the classic Hades; and we have traced them back a long way
into the Middle Ages in French, British, and Danish traditions relating
to fairies and other supernatural existences, with a special threat of
Hell in the case of Thomas of Erceldoune.

On the other side of the globe the Banks' islanders believe, like the
Greeks, in an underground kingdom of the dead, which they call Panoi.
Only a few years ago a woman was living who professed to have been down
there. Her object had been to visit her brother, who had recently died.
To do this she perfumed herself with water in which a dead rat had been
steeped, so as to give herself a death-like smell. She then pulled up a
bird's nest and descended through the hole thus made. Her brother, whom
of course she found, cautioned her to eat nothing, and by taking his
advice she was able to return. A similar tale is told of a New Zealand
woman of rank, who was lucky enough to come back from the abode of
departed spirits by the assistance of her father and his repeated
commands to avoid tasting the disgusting food of the dead. Waeinaemoeinen,
the epic hero of the Finns, determined to penetrate to Manala, the
region of the dead. We need not follow in detail his voyage; it will
suffice to say that on his arrival, after a long parley with the maiden
daughter of Tuoni, the king of the island, beer was brought to him in a
two-eared tankard.

"Waeinaemoeinen, old and trusty,
Gaz'd awhile upon the tankard;
Lo! within it frogs were spawning,
Worms about its sides were laying.
Words in this wise then he utter'd:
'Not to drink have I come hither
From the tankard of Manala,
Not to empty Tuoni's beaker;
They who drink of beer are drowned,
Those who drain the can are ruin'd.'"[22]

The hero's concluding words might form a motto for our teetotallers; and
in any case his abstinence enabled him to succeed in his errand and
return. A point is made in the poem of the loathsome character of the
beverage offered him, which thus agrees with the poison referred to in
some of the narratives I have previously cited. The natives of the
Southern Seas universally represent the sustenance of spirits as filthy
and abominable. A most