Celts -- Folklore; Fairy tales; Fairy tales -- Great Britain; Folklore -- Great Britain; Tales -- Great Britain
"Such was the vision I beheld, and a voice sounded into my ears. 'Go
now, thither, MacConglinney, for you have no power of eating in you.'
'What must I do,' said I, for the sight of that had made me greedy. Then
the voice bade me go to the hermitage of the Wizard Doctor, and there I
should find appetite for all kinds of savoury tender sweet food,
acceptable to the body.
"There in the harbour of the lake before me I saw a juicy little coracle
of beef; its thwarts were of curds, its prow of lard; its stern of
butter; its oars were flitches of venison. Then I rowed across the wide
expanse of the New Milk Lake, through seas of broth, past river mouths
of meat, over swelling boisterous waves of butter milk, by perpetual
pools of savoury lard, by islands of cheese, by headlands of old curds,
until I reached the firm level land between Butter Mount and Milk Lake,
in the land of O'Early-eating, in front of the hermitage of the Wizard
Doctor.
"Marvellous, indeed, was the hermitage. Around it were seven-score
hundred smooth stakes of old bacon, and instead of thorns above the top
of every stake was fixed juicy lard. There was a gate of cream, whereon
was a bolt of sausage. And there I saw the doorkeeper, Bacon Lad, son of
Butterkins, son of Lardipole, with his smooth sandals of old bacon, his
legging of pot-meat round his shins, his tunic of corned beef, his
girdle of salmon skin round him, his hood of flummery about him, his
steed of bacon under him, with its four legs of custard, its four hoofs
of oaten bread, its ears of curds, its two eyes of honey in its head; in
his hand a whip, the cords whereof were four-and-twenty fair white
puddings, and every juicy drop that fell from each of these puddings
would have made a meal for an ordinary man.
"On going in I beheld the Wizard Doctor with his two gloves of rump
steak on his hands, setting in order the house, which was hung all round
with tripe, from roof to floor.
"I went into the kitchen, and there I saw the Wizard Doctor's son, with
his fishing hook of lard in his hand, and the line was made of marrow,
and he was angling in a lake of whey. Now he would bring up a flitch of
ham, and now a fillet of corned beef. And as he was angling, he fell in,
and was drowned.
"As I set my foot across the threshold into the house, I saw a pure
white bed of butter, on which I sat down, but I sank down into it up to
the tips of my hair. Hard work had the eight strongest men in the house
to pull me out by the top of the crown of my head.
"Then I was taken in to the Wizard Doctor. 'What aileth thee?' said he.
"My wish would be, that all the many wonderful viands of the world were
before me, that I might eat my fill and satisfy my greed. But alas!
great is the misfortune to me, who cannot obtain any of these.
"'On my word,' said the Doctor, 'the disease is grievous. But thou shall
take home with thee a medicine to cure thy disease, and shalt be for
ever healed therefrom.'
"'What is that?' asked I.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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