Note 7 — Chapter CXXIII

Cp. Oesterley’s Baitál Pachísí, p. 14; and the note on p. 176. In Aelian’s Varia Historia, III, 19, there is a tree, the fruit of which makes an old man become gradually younger and younger until he reaches the antenatal state of non-existence. The passage is referred to by Rohde, Der Griechische Roman, p. 207. Baring Gould, in Appendix A to his Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, gives a very curious passage from the Bragda Mágus Saga, an Icelandic version of the romance of Maugis. Here we have a man named Vidförull who was in the habit of changing his skin and becoming young again. He changed his skin once when he was 330 years old, a second time at the age of 215, and a third time in the presence of Charlemagne. It is quite possible that the story in the text is a form of the fable of the Wandering Jew.