Food is central to folkloric narrative, not only within popular customs but also throughout its supernatural imagination: from the magical food of folktales to the poisoned or bewitched morsel associated with witches. One of the best-known motifs is the forbidden food offered by fairies or the dead when a traveller enters their world. By eating the food of the Otherworld, the protagonist becomes part of it, leaving something of the human self behind and replacing it with something no longer entirely human. This is why those who eat fairy food so often find themselves unable ever to return to the human world —or at least unable to return in quite the same condition.

In this category you will find legends connected with food, drink and recipes, whether entirely ordinary or wonderfully extraordinary.