The relationship between humans and the fairy world is well-documented in British folklore, with fairy folk described as a far darker, more troublesome force than their contemporary counterparts. Our ancestors found fairies suspicious and frightening, and British mythology is rich with stories of unwary humans being tricked or punished by Fey folk. You’d be hard-pushed to recognise the benign, sparkly wish-granting creatures with which we are familiar.
Tales abound of babies stolen from their cradles and replaced by fairies, of women shocked to find a hideous creature lying where their newborn once slept. These fairy impostors seem to be most common in stories from Ireland and Scotland, as well as Northern Europe; known as Changelings, they were something to be feared for a great many new mothers. For anyone living in today’s knowledge-rich society, it’s difficult to imagine how people could truly believe that a baby could be stolen by fairies, but several hundred years ago illness and death – especially that of children – was a very real part of life, and supernatural explanations for such events probably brought a degree of comfort to people who had no knowledge of modern science or medicine.
Tell-tale signs that the fairies had replaced a child with one of their own kind included: incessant crying and refusing to settle; unusual facial features or curiously distorted limbs; constant feeding at the mother’s breast, without ever seeming satisfied, and the ability to speak despite only being a few days old. Changeling babies were responsible for much ill-fortune for the poor ‘host’ family – their presence would cause fresh milk to curdle, and illness to plague the household.
Human babies could be taken for many reasons; to replace an ailing or unattractive fairy child, or to gain strength from the human mother’s milk, or even for the fairy folk to feed on (a particularly grisly variant). Perhaps it was a way to punish humans, who so often treated the fairy world with suspicion and disrespect. Conversely, some version of Changeling lore suggest that the fairy folk loved human babies and thought them beautiful – they stole the prettiest, most good-natured babies to raise as their own, replacing it with a more troublesome fairy baby. In Scottish folklore the baby was offered to the Devil as part of the fairy folks’ tithe to Hell, as in the Ballad of Tam Lin.
In some cases the creature left behind was not a baby but an older member of the fairy family – perhaps cast out, or left to die amongst the humans, osctracised from his own kind. It would fall to the human recipients to nurse this little person, for what choice did they have? It would have been unthinkable to anger the fairies further by neglecting their ‘cuckoo’.
In other stories, the baby was not replaced with a living creature but with a lump of wood ‘enchanted’ to resemble a child; this enchantment would wear off after a few days, revealing the true fate of the baby. Sometimes the wood (called a ‘stock’ or ‘fetch’) would seem to sicken and die, but instead of a corpse there would lie a pile of rotting wood.
There were various methods of revealing and even returning Changelings, some of them horribly violent. If the baby’s mother suspected she was host to a fairy child, she could try to trick it into revealing itself. For example, if she pretended to cook the family meal inside a single eggshell rather than a cooking-pot, the Changeling would be so confused that it would sit up and recite a rhyme:
“Acorn before oak I knew,
and an egg before a hen,
but never before have I seen
an eggshell brew dinner for harvest men.” (1)
Having revealed itself, it would flee back to its own kind and the stolen baby would be returned.
It was also said that a Changeling could be exposed by holding the baby over a hot stove on an iron spade, or holding it under water; as shocking as it sounds, it’s likely that many babies fell victim to such abuse in times when such legends were widely believed. Though it’s impossible to imagine inflicting such cruelty on any child nowadays, the truth was that most folk knew very little about what could really have caused these strange characteristics and behaviours in their babies. Genetic conditions, chromosomal abnormalities, diseases – all could give children a strange or even frightening appearance, and for people who had never come across such things, they could only rationalise it by declaring it the work of fairies.
Even as late as the end of the nineteenth century, suspicions of fairy magic were seen as a legitimat defence against a charge of murder. The most famous case is that of Bridget Cleary, an Irish woman who was burned to death by her husband Michael after she fell ill. He and a group of fellow villagers were cleared of murder, as they claimed it was not Bridget they had killed but a Changeling who had taken her place.
Further Reading:
Changelings by Terri Windling
Wikipedia entry for Changelings
Changeling Legends from the British Isles – an excellent comprehensive resource.
Have you read Angela Bourke’s The Burning of Bridget Cleary? It’s a brilliant sociological take on the story.
It’s on my wishlist after writing this post – I was surprised to see only one or two references on the Wikepedia entry, considering the amount of literature that exists around the Pendle witch trials etc. I think it would make an excellent starting point for a novel, too.
I’ve only got it on kindle otherwise I’d loan it to you. It’s quite fascinating and definitely a great starting point for a novel.
Well the paperback’s pretty cheap, so I’ll order it on payday. Looking forward to reading it.
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A truly fascinating post. Thank you.