Changelings--The Plentyn-newid--The Cruel Creed of Ignorance
regarding Changelings--Modes of Ridding the House of the
Fairy Child--The Legend of the Frugal Meal--Legend of the
Place of Strife--Dewi Dal and the Fairies--Prevention of
Fairy Kidnapping--Fairies caught in the Act by
Mothers--Piety as an Exorcism.
I.
The Tylwyth Teg have a fatal admiration for lovely children. Hence the
abundant folk-lore concerning infants who have been stolen from their
cradles, and a plentyn-newid (change-child--the equivalent of our
changeling) left in its place by the Tylwyth Teg. The plentyn-newid
has the exact appearance of the stolen infant, at first; but its
aspect speedily alters. It grows ugly of face, shrivelled of form,
ill-tempered, wailing, and generally frightful. It bites and strikes,
and becomes a terror to the poor mother. Sometimes it is idiotic; but
again it has a supernatural cunning, not only impossible in a mortal
babe, but not even appertaining to the oldest heads, on other than
fairy shoulders. The veracious Prophet Jones testifies to a case where
he himself saw the plentyn-newid--an idiot left in the stead of a son
of Edmund John William, of the Church Valley, Monmouthshire. Says
Jones: 'I saw him myself. There was something diabolical in his
aspect,' but especially in his motions. He 'made very disagreeable
screaming sounds,' which used to frighten strangers greatly, but
otherwise he was harmless. He was of a 'dark, tawny complexion.' He
lived longer than such children usually lived in Wales in that day, (a
not altogether pleasant intimation regarding the hard lot to which
such children were subjected by their unwilling parents,) reaching the
age of ten or twelve years. But the creed of ignorance everywhere as
regards changelings is a very cruel one, and reminds us of the tests
of the witchcraft trials. Under the pretence of proving whether the
objectionable baby is a changeling or not, it is held on a shovel over
the fire, or it is bathed in a solution of the fox-glove, which kills
it; a case where this test was applied is said to have actually
occurred in Carnarvonshire in 1857. That there is nothing specially
Welsh in this, needs not to be pointed out. Apart from the fact that
infanticide, like murder, is of no country, similar practices as to
changelings have prevailed in most European lands, either to test the
child's uncanny quality, or, that being admitted, to drive it away and
thus compel the fairies to restore the missing infant. In Denmark the
mother heats the oven, and places the changeling on the peel,
pretending to put it in; or whips it severely with a rod; or throws it
into the water. In Sweden they employ similar methods. In Ireland the
hot shovel is used. With regard to a changeling which Martin Luther
tells of in his 'Colloquia Mensalia,' the great reformer declared to
the Prince of Anhalt, that if he were prince of that country he would
'venture _homicidium_ thereon, and would throw it into the River
Moldaw.' He admonished the people to pray devoutly to God to take away
the devil, which 'was done accordingly; and the second year after the
changeling died.' It is hardly probable that the child was very well
fed during the two years that this pious process was going on. Its
starved ravenous appetite indeed is indicated in Luther's description:
It 'would eat as much as two threshers, would laugh and be joyful when
any evil happened in the house, but would cry and be very sad when all
went well.'
II.
A story, told in various forms in Wales, preserves a tradition of an
exceedingly frugal meal which was employed as a means of banishing a
plentyn-newid. M. Villemarque, when in Glamorganshire, heard this
story, which he found to be precisely the same as a Breton legend, in
which the changeling utters a rhymed triad as follows:
Gweliz vi ken guelet iar wenn,
Gweliz mez ken gwelet gwezen.
Gweliz mez ha gweliz gwial,
Gweliz derven e Koat Brezal,
Biskoaz na weliz kemend all.
In the Glamorgan story the changeling was heard muttering to himself
in a cracked voice: 'I have seen the acorn before I saw the oak: I
have seen the egg before I saw the white hen: I have never seen the
like of this.' M. Villemarque found it remarkable that these words
form in Welsh a rhymed triad nearly the same as in the Breton ballad,
thus:
Gweliz mez ken gwelet derven,
Gweliz vi ken gwelet iar wenn,
Erioez ne wiliz evelhenn.[34]
Whence he concluded that the story and the rhyme are older than the
seventh century, the epoch of the separation of the Britons of Wales
and Armorica. And this is the story: A mother whose child had been
stolen, and a changeling left in its place, was advised by the Virgin
Mary to prepare a meal for ten farm-servants in an egg-shell, which
would make the changeling speak. This she did, and the changeling
asked what she was about. She told him. Whereupon he exclaimed, 'A
meal for ten, dear mother, in one egg-shell?' Then he uttered the
exclamation given above, ('I have seen the acorn,' etc.,) and the
mother replied, 'You have seen too many things, my son, you shall have
a beating.' With this she fell to beating him, the child fell to
bawling, and the fairy came and took him away, leaving the stolen
child sleeping sweetly in the cradle. It awoke and said, 'Ah, mother,
I have been a long time asleep!'
FOOTNOTE:
[34] Keightley, 'Fairy Mythology,' 437.
III.
I have encountered this tale frequently among the Welsh, and it always
keeps in the main the likeness of M. Villemarque's story. The
following is a nearly literal version as related in Radnorshire (an
adjoining county to Montgomeryshire), and which, like most of these
tales, is characterised by the non-primitive tendency to give names of
localities: 'In the parish of Trefeglwys, near Llanidloes, in the
county of Montgomery, there is a little shepherd's cot that is
commonly called the Place of Strife, on account of the extraordinary
strife that has been there. The inhabitants of the cottage were a man
and his wife, and they had born to them twins, whom the woman nursed
with great care and tenderness. Some months after, indispensable
business called the wife to the house of one of her nearest
neighbours, yet notwithstanding that she had not far to go, she did
not like to leave her children by themselves in their cradle, even for
a minute, as her house was solitary, and there were many tales of
goblins, or the Tylwyth Teg, haunting the neighbourhood. However, she
went and returned as soon as she could;' but on her way back she was
'not a little terrified at seeing, though it was midday, some of the
old elves of the blue petticoat.' She hastened home in great
apprehension; but all was as she had left it, so that her mind was
greatly relieved. 'But after some time had passed by, the good people
began to wonder that the twins did not grow at all, but still
continued little dwarfs. The man would have it that they were not his
children; the woman said they must be their children, and about this
arose the great strife between them that gave name to the place. One
evening when the woman was very heavy of heart, she determined to go
and consult a conjuror, feeling assured that everything was known to
him.... Now there was to be a harvest soon of the rye and oats, so the
wise man said to her, "When you are preparing dinner for the reapers,
empty the shell of a hen's egg, and boil the shell full of pottage,
and take it out through the door as if you meant it for a dinner to
the reapers, and then listen what the twins will say; if you hear the
children speaking things above the understanding of children, return
into the house, take them and throw them into the waves of Llyn Ebyr,
which is very near to you; but if you don't hear anything remarkable
do them no injury." And when the day of the reaping came, the woman
did as her adviser had recommended to her; and as she went outside the
door to listen she heard one of the children say to the other:
Gwelais fesen cyn gweled derwen;
Gwelais wy cyn gweled iar;
Erioed ni welais ferwi bwyd i fedel
Mewn plisgyn wy iar!
Acorns before oak I knew;
An egg before a hen;
Never one hen's egg-shell stew
Enough for harvest men!
'On this the mother returned to her house and took the two children
and threw them into the Llyn; and suddenly the goblins in their blue
trousers came to save their dwarfs, and the mother had her own
children back again; and thus the strife between her and her husband
ended.'[35]
FOOTNOTE:
[35] 'Cambrian Quarterly,' ii., 86.
IV.
This class of story is not always confined to the case of the
plentyn-newid, as I have said. It is applied to the household fairy,
when the latter, as in the following instance, appears to have brought
a number of extremely noisy friends and acquaintances to share his
shelter. Dewi Dal was a farmer, whose house was over-run with fairies,
so that he could not sleep of nights for the noise they made. Dewi
consulted a wise man of Taiar, who entrusted Dewi's wife to do certain
things, which she did carefully, as follows: 'It was the commencement
of oat harvest, when Cae Mawr, or the big field, which it took fifteen
men to mow in a day, was ripe for the harvesters. "I will prepare food
for the fifteen men who are going to mow Cae Mawr to-morrow," said
Eurwallt, the wife, aloud. "Yes, do," replied Dewi, also aloud, so
that the fairies might hear, "and see that the food is substantial and
sufficient for the hard work before them." Said Eurwallt, "The fifteen
men shall have no reason to complain upon that score. They shall be
fed according to our means." Then when evening was come Eurwallt
prepared food for the harvesters' sustenance upon the following day.
Having procured a sparrow, she trussed it like a fowl, and roasted it
by the kitchen fire. She then placed some salt in a nut-shell, and set
the sparrow and the salt, with a small piece of bread, upon the table,
ready for the fifteen men's support while mowing Cae Mawr. So when the
fairies beheld the scanty provision made for so many men, they said
"Let us quickly depart from this place, for alas! the means of our
hosts are exhausted. Who before this was ever so reduced in
circumstances as to serve up a sparrow for the day's food of fifteen
men?" So they departed upon that very night. And Dewi Dal and his
family lived, ever afterwards, in comfort and peace.'[36]
FOOTNOTE:
[36] Rev. T. R. Lloyd (Estyn), in 'The Principality.'
V.
The Welsh fairies have several times been detected in the act of
carrying off a child; and in these cases, if the mother has been
sufficiently energetic in her objections, they have been forced to
abandon their purpose. Dazzy Walter, the wife of Abel Walter, of Ebwy
Fawr, one night in her husband's absence awoke in her bed and found
her baby was not at her side. In great fright she sought for it, and
caught it with her hand upon the boards above the bed, which was as
far as the fairies had succeeded in carrying it. And Jennet Francis,
of that same valley of Ebwy Fawr, one night in bed felt her infant son
being taken from her arms; whereupon she screamed and hung on, and, as
she phrased it, 'God and me were too hard for them.' This son
subsequently grew up and became a famous preacher of the gospel.
[Illustration: JENNET FRANCIS STRUGGLES WITH THE FAIRIES FOR
HER BABY.]
There are special exorcisms and preventive measures to interfere with
the fairies in their quest of infants. The most significant of these,
throughout Cambria, is a general habit of piety. Any pious
exclamation has value as an exorcism; but it will not serve as a
preventive. To this end you must put a knife in the child's cradle
when you leave it alone, or you must lay a pair of tongs across the
cradle. But the best preventive is baptism; it is usually the
unbaptised infant that is stolen. So in Friesland, Germany, it is
considered a protection against the fairies who deal in changelings,
to lay a Bible under the child's pillow. In Thuringia it is deemed an
infallible preventive to hang the father's breeches against the wall.
Anything more trivial than this, as a matter for the consideration of
grave and scholarly men, one could hardly imagine; but it is in
precisely these trivial or seemingly trivial details that the student
of comparative folk-lore finds his most extraordinary indices. Such a
superstition in isolation would suggest nothing; but it is found again
in Scotland,[37] and other countries, including China, where 'a pair
of the trousers of the child's father are put on the frame of the
bedstead in such a way that the waist shall hang downward or be lower
than the legs. On the trousers is stuck a piece of red paper, having
four words written upon it intimating that all unfavourable influences
are to go into the trousers instead of afflicting the babe.'[38]
FOOTNOTES:
[37] Henderson, 'Notes on the Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties,' 6.
[38] See Doolittle's 'Social Life of the Chinese.'