Note 4 — IX.—ELVES, FAIRIES, AND BROWNIES.

Fairies in China indeed, as with us, usually possess the attribute of beauty. A well-known Chinese legend relates how two friends wandering amongst the ravines of their native mountains in search of herbs for medicinal purposes come to a fairy bridge where two maidens of more than earthly beauty are on guard. They invite them to the fairy land which lies on the other side of the bridge, and the invitation being accepted they become enamoured of the maidens, and pass what to them seems a short though blissful period of existence with the fairy folk. At length they desire to revisit their earthly homes and are allowed to return, when they find that seven generations have lived and died during their apparently short absence, they themselves having become centenarians.4 Another version of the story is found in the Liao chai chih yi. About A.D. 60 or 70 two friends named Yüan Chao and Liu Chʻên when wandering amongst the Tʻien-tʻai mountains lost their way, and after wandering about for some time at length came upon a fairy retreat where two beautiful girls received them and fed them on hu ma 胡麻 (hemp, the Chinese haschisch). After spending what seems only a few days with their hostesses they return home and find to their astonishment that seven generations have passed away since they made the acquaintance of the maidens.5 I may here remark that this Rip Van Winkle sort of story takes several forms in China, and a slight digression on this subject may be pardoned. A legend, related of Wang Chih, one of the patriarchs of the Taoist sect, involves him in a similar catastrophe with less obvious excuse than in the case of the two friends above mentioned.6 Wandering one day in the mountains of Kü Chow to gather firewood “he entered a grotto in which some aged men were seated intent upon a game of chess. He laid down his axe and looked on at their game, in the course of which one of the old men handed him a thing in shape and size like a date stone, telling him to put it into his mouth. No sooner had he tasted it than ‘he became oblivious of hunger and thirst.’ After some time had elapsed, one of the players said, ‘It is long since you came here, you should go home now!’ whereupon Wang Chih proceeding to pick up his axe found that its handle had mouldered into dust. On repairing to his home he found that centuries had passed since the time when he had left it for the mountains, and that no vestige of his kinsfolk remained. Retiring to a retreat among the hills he devoted himself to the rites of Taoism, and finally attained to immortality”—a very un-Van-Winkle-like termination to the legend.