Caveat: 신선노리에 도끼 자루 썩는줄 모른다

This is a proverb from my proverb book.

신선      노리에    도끼    자루   썩는        줄           모른다.

sin·seon no·ri·e  do·kki ja·ru  sseok·neun jul         mo·reun·da
faerie   play-LOC ax     handle rot-GER    likely-fact not-know-PRES

[A man] at play with the faeries doesn’t realize [his] ax-handle is rotting.

The book explains that it is based on a fairy tale about a woodcutter who goes into the mountains and plays with wood nymphs or sprites and forgets the world, and only awakens from his reverie as a bent old man with a rotting ax-handle. It seems similar to the story of the lotus-eaters in Homer, but there are many stories of people losing track of their regular lives in lost reveries by falling under enchantment.
In looking up the proverb online, there seems to be a more common grammatical variation on this proverb that begins “신선 놀음에…” – this is just substituting 놀음 (a gerund of the verb “to play”) for the related noun meaning “play”.
I doubt this temple-panel picture has anything to do with the story, but it seemed to share something of the same atmospherics, at least to my mind.
2013-10-17 10.57.43

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