tors. Should you be so foolish as to do so,
you will certainly at some future time come back to my domains, and I
will see to it that you do not escape my vengeance a second time!'
Tekanae accordingly left the Shades, and came back to life"; but he, it
is needless to say, carefully disregarded the hag's injunction, or we
should not have had the foregoing veracious account of what happens
below.[23]

The tortures reserved for Miru's victims cast a weird light on the
warning in the Picard story against eating and drinking what the devil
may offer. But whether poisoning in the latter case would have been the
preliminary to a hearty meal to be made off the unlucky youth by his
treacherous host, or no, it is impossible to determine. What the tales
do suggest, however, is that the food buried with the dead by
uncivilized tribes may be meant to provide them against the contingency
of having to partake of the hospitality of the Shades, and so afford
them a chance of escaping back to the upper air. But, putting this
conjecture aside, we have found the supposition that to eat of fairy
food is to return no more, equally applicable to the world of the dead
as to Fairyland. In seeking its meaning, therefore, we must not be
satisfied without an explanation that will fit both. Almost all over the
earth the rite of hospitality has been held to confer obligations on its
recipient, and to unite him by special ties to the giver. And even where
the notion of hospitality does not enter, to join in a common meal has
often been held to symbolize, if not to constitute, union of a very
sacred kind. The formation of blood relationship, or brotherhood, and
formal adoption into a tribe or family (ceremonies well known in the
lower culture), are usually, if not always, cemented in this way. The
modern wedding breakfast, with its bridecake, is a survival from a very
ancient mode of solemnizing the closest tie of all; and when Proserpine
tasted a pomegranate she partook of a fruit of a specially symbolic
character to signify acceptance of her new destiny as her captor's wife.
Hence to partake of food in the land of spirits, whether they are human
dead, or fairies, is to proclaim one's union with them and to renounce
the fellowship of mortals.

The other point emphasized in the Swedish tales quoted just now is the
Troll's gratitude, as evidenced by his gifts to the successful midwife.
Before considering this, however, let us note that these supernatu