If you were to sit down to a five-course meal of manna soup, ambrosia salad, roast jubjub bird, fresh funistrada, and braised trake—served with your choice of pigeon’s milk, nectar, or ice-worm cocktail, and eaten, of course, with a runcible spoon—you would be savoring a barmecide, that is, a feast of imaginary food. According to folklore, Barmecide was originally the patronym of a Persian prince who served a beggar a succession of empty dishes, a banquet that the beggar good-naturedly pretended to enjoy (though he did politely refuse the imaginary wine because his religion forbade alcohol). Nowadays, barmecide refers more generally to any benefit that turns out to be empty, illusory, or nonexistent.