Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 6 1888.djvu/86

78 olden times, he said, that an aged man, while trudging along a country road, was accosted by a fairy, who, perceiving him to be a worthy fellow, desired to translate him to the heavenly land. 'Take,' he said, 'these two pills; keep them until the fifteenth day of the eighth month; at a certain hour, if you look towards the southern heavens, you will see a door appear. As soon as the door opens swallow the two pills, and you will be changed into a genie.' And in a moment he had disappeared. The old man in simple faith pocketed the pills and returned to his home, where—alas I for the frailty of man—he was not long able to keep the secret from his wife. When the appointed day arrived, the husband having left the house, the wife bethought herself of the pills and determined to try their virtue. Looking towards the southern heavens, there surely was the door as her husband had told her. As it slowly opened she swallowed one of the pills, considerately leaving the second for her husband. Forthwith the heavens opened and a stool descended to the earth, and no sooner had the good lady seated herself than she was wafted away into space. Shortly afterwards the husband returned much distressed to find himself minus a wife and a pill too. There was no help for it, so he did the best he could under the circumstances. The heavens indeed had not opened and no door had appeared. But he hastily swallowed the remaining pill and another stool descended from the sky, and soon he was flying after his wife. But ere he reached the gate of heaven the bolt had been drawn, and he was left like a peri weeping at the confines of paradise. Touched at his distress the guardian angel turned him into a genie, and gave him the Kuang Han Kung, or 'Palace of Chilly Vastness,' in the moon for a residence, where he still lives in dreary solitude. Meanwhile his wife had entered the heavenly portal and been changed into a female genie under the name of Chang O. Once a year, on the anniversary of their separation, she opens the door of heaven and gladdens the heart of her wronged and suffering husband with a sight of his spouse. It is to join and support him in his transitory bliss, and to drink to his health, says my scholarly friend, that mortals carouse and become jovial at the mid-autumn festival. The reader will notice that it is not a hare that is worshipped, but a man, or