17]

Confining our attention for the moment to the refusal of food, it would
seem that the Earthman's apology in the foregoing narrative is, as too
many human apologies are, a mere excuse. The real reason for the
midwife's abstention was not that fairy food was distasteful, but that
she durst not touch it, under penalty of never again returning to the
light of day. A Danish tradition tells of a woman who was taken by an
elf on Christmas Eve down into the earth to attend his wife. As soon as
the elfwife was delivered her husband took the child away; for if he
could find two newly married persons in the bridal bed, before they had
repeated their Paternoster, he could, by laying the child between them,
procure for it all the good fortune intended for the newly wedded pair.
During his absence the elfwife took the opportunity of instructing her
helper as to her conduct when he returned; and the first and chief point
of her advice was to eat nothing that was offered her. The elfwife was
herself a Christian woman who had been inveigled down into the dwellings
of the elves; she had eaten, and therefore had never escaped again. On
the elf's return, accordingly, the midwife refused food, and he said:
"They did not strike thee on the mouth who taught thee that." Late
rabbinical writings contain a similar legend of a Mohel, a man whose
office it was to circumcise, who was summoned one winter's night by a
stranger to perform the ceremony upon a child who would be eight days
old the following day. The stranger led him to a lofty mountain, into
the bowels of which they passed, and after descending many flights of
steps found themselves in a great city. Here the Mohel was taken to a
palace, in one of whose apartments was the child's mother lying. When
she saw the Mohel she began to weep, and told him that he was in the
land of the Mazikin, but that she was a human being, a Jewess, who had
been carried away when little from home and brought thither. And she
counselled him to take good heed to refuse everything whether of meat or
drink that might be offered him: "For if thou taste anything of theirs
thou wilt become like one of them, and wilt remain here for ever."[18]

We touch here upon a very ancient and widespread superstition, which we
may pause to illustrate from different parts of the world. A Manx tale,
which can be traced back to Waldron, narrates the night adventure of a
farmer who lost his way in returning home from Peel, and