CHAPTER V.

CHANGELINGS.

The belief in changelings--Precautions against changing--Motives

assigned for changing--Attempts frustrated--How changelings may

be known--Their physical characteristics--Devices to lead them to

betray themselves--Their subsequent treatment--Journey to

Fairyland to fetch back the true child--Adult changelings.

A new-born babe, of all human beings the most helpless, has always

roused compassion and care. Nor is it a matter for wonder if its

helplessness against physical dangers have led to the assumption that it

is exposed to spiritual or supernatural evils more than its elders. At

all events it seems a widespread superstition that a babe, when first it

makes its appearance in this world, must be protected not merely against

the natural perils of its condition, but also against enemies of an even

more subtle and fearful description. The shape taken by this

superstition in north-western Europe is the belief in Changelings--a

belief which I propose to examine in the present chapter.[60]

By the belief in changelings I mean a belief that fairies and other

imaginary beings are on the watch for young children, or (as we shall

see hereafter) sometimes even for adults, that they may, if they can

find them unguarded, seize and carry them off, leaving in their place

one of themselves, or a block of wood animated by their enchantments and

made to resemble the stolen person. Wise mothers take precautions

against such thefts. These precautions are tolerably simple, and for the

most part display the same general character. First and foremost among

them is the rite of baptism, whereby the little one is admitted into the

Christian Church. Faith in the efficacy of baptism as a protection from

the powers hostile to man is not less strong among communities nominally

Protestant than among Roman Catholics, and has doubtless operated to

bring many children within the pale of the visible Church who might

otherwise have been long in reaching that sacred enclosure. Examples of

the belief in the power of baptism against the depredations of fairies

could easily be cited from all Protestant countries. Without doing this,

we may just pause to note that baptism was also reckoned a remedy for

disease. This is doubtless a relic of the old creed which refers all

human ailments to witchcraft and other spiritualistic origins. Mr.

Henderson, speaking of the notion prevalent in the north of England that

sickly infants never thrive until they are christened, relates a story

communicated to him by a clergyman, within whose personal knowledge it

had happened. He says: "The infant child of a chimney-sweeper at Thorne,

in the West Riding of Yorkshire, was in a very weak state of health, and

appeared to be pining away. A neighbour looked in, and inquired if the

child had been baptized. On an answer being given in the negative, she

gravely said, 'I would try having it christened.' The counsel was taken,

and I believe with success." The same belief is found both in North and

South Wales. It is also testified to by a Scottish clergyman, who

moreover adduces the following conversation as illustrative of it and of

"an undefinable sort of awe about unbaptized infants, as well as an idea

of uncanniness in having them without baptism in the house," which is

entertained among the labouring classes in the north-east of Scotland.

"Oh, sir," said the wife of a working man to the minister, on asking him

to baptize her child along with others, whose mothers were present,

"this registration's the warst thing the queentry ever saw; it sud be

deen awa' wee athegeethir!" "Why?" asked the minister, in astonishment

at the woman's words and earnestness of manner. "It'll pit oot kirsnin

athegeethir. Ye see the craitirs gets their names, an we jist think that

aneuch, an' we're in nae hurry sennin for you." How far, as this

anecdote dimly suggests, it was the giving of a name which was supposed

to protect a child, I cannot say: more probably it was the dedication to

God involved in baptism. This is countenanced by the precaution said to

have been observed in Nithsdale when a pretty child was born to

consecrate it to God, and sue for its protection by "taking the Beuk"

and other acts of prayer and devotion.[61]

Putting aside such ceremonies as these which may be supposed distinctly

Christian, there were other charms looked upon as efficacious. Thus in

Scotland it was deemed highly judicious to keep an open Bible always

near a child, and even to place the holy volume beneath the head of a

woman in labour. In some parts of Germany it is enough to lay a single

leaf out of a Bible or prayer-book in the cradle, until by the baptism

of the infant the danger of robbery passes away; and a prayer-book is

also placed under the pillow of the newly-made mother, who is at that

time specially liable to fall under the power of the underground folk.

Indeed a prayer-book, or the mere repetition of a Paternoster, is

equally valuable with a Bible for these purposes; and if, by the neglect

of any of these precautions, an opportunity be given to the foe, the

child may yet be saved by the utterance of the name of Jesus Christ at

the moment when the change is being effected. Holy water and the sign of

the cross, in Ireland, or a rosary blessed by a priest, in Picardy,

enjoy a similar reputation.[62]

All these means of prevention are veneered with some sort of

Christianity; but there are others which display Heathenism naked and

unblushing. While a child in Mecklenburg remains unbaptized it is

necessary to burn a light in the chamber. Nor is the superstition

confined to one district: it is common all over Germany and Denmark; it

was once common in England; it is found in Ireland; it is found among

the Lithuanians on the shores of the Baltic; it was practised by the

ancient Romans, and appears to be a relic of the sacred character

anciently imputed to fire. In the island of Lewis fire used to be

carried round women before they were churched and children before they

were christened, both night and morning; and this was held effectual to

preserve both mother and infant from evil spirits, and (in the case of

the infant) from being changed. The Sad Dar, one of the sacred books of

the Parsees, contains directions to keep a continual fire in the house

during a woman's pregnancy, and after the child is born to burn a lamp

for three nights and days--a fire, indeed, is declared to be better--"so

that the demons and fiends may not be able to do any damage and harm."

By way of enforcing this precept we are told that when Zoroaster was

born, a demon came at the head of a hundred and fifty other demons,

every night for three nights, to slay him, but they were put to flight

by seeing the fire, and were consequently unable to hurt him.[63]

Iron or steel, in the shape of needles, a key, a knife, a pair of tongs,

an open pair of scissors, or in any other shape, if placed in the

cradle, secured the desired end. In Bulgaria a reaping-hook is placed in

a corner of the room for the same purpose. I shall not stay now to

discuss the reason why supernatural beings dread and dislike iron. The

open pair of scissors, however, it should be observed, has double power;

for it is not only of the abhorred metal,--it is also in form a cross.

The use of the cross in baptism was probably one of the reasons for the

efficacy of that rite against felonious fairies. At all events, over a

very wide area the cross is thought a potent protection; nor is the

belief by any means confined to Christian lands. Mr. Mitchell-Innes

tells us that the fear of changelings exists in China. "To avert the

calamity of nursing a demon, dried banana-skin is burnt to ashes, which

are then mixed with water. Into this the mother dips her finger and

paints a cross upon the sleeping babe's forehead. In a short time the

demon soul returns--for the soul wanders from the body during sleep and

is free--but, failing to recognize the body thus disguised, flies off.

The true soul, which has been waiting for an opportunity, now approaches

the dormant body, and, if the mark has been washed off in time, takes

possession of it; but if not, it, like the demon, failing to recognize

the body, departs, and the child dies in its sleep."[64] How to hit the

exact moment between the flight of the demon and the advent of the true

soul doubtless puzzles many a Chinese mother fully as much as the cross

puzzles the two competing souls. But when she is successful she baffles

the evil spirit by deceit, of which the cross is made the instrument;

though we may well believe that the child is not disguised in this way

without reference to the cross's inherent sanctity; for it is a

religious symbol among nations who never heard the gospel of the

Crucified.

Spirits whose baleful influences are feared by man are happily easily

tricked. To this guilelessness on their part must be attributed another

strange method of defeating their evil designs on children. It appears

to be enough to lay over the infant, or on the bed beside the mother, a

portion of the father's clothes. A shepherd's wife living near Selkirk

was lying in bed one day with her new-born boy at her side, when she

heard a sound of talking and laughter in the room. Suspecting what

turned out to be the case, she seized in great alarm her husband's

waistcoat, which was lying at the foot of the bed, and flung it over

herself and the child. The fairies, for it was they who were the cause

of the noise, set up a loud scream, crying out: "Auld Luckie has cheated

us o' our bairnie!" Soon afterwards the woman heard something fall down

the chimney, and looking out she saw a waxen effigy of her baby, stuck

full of pins, lying on the hearth. The would-be thieves had meant to

substitute this for the child. When her husband came home he made up a

large fire and threw the doll upon it; but, instead of burning, the

thing flew up the chimney amid shouts of laughter from the unseen

visitors. The suggestion seems to be that the sight of the father's

clothes leads "the good people" to think that he himself is present

watching over his offspring. Some articles of clothing, however, seem to

have special virtue, such as a right shirt-sleeve or a left stocking,

though wherefore is not very clear; and in China, about Canton, a

fisherman's net is employed with as little apparent reason. In Sweden

the babe is wrapped in red cloth, which we may be allowed to conjecture

is intended to cozen the fairies by simulating fire.[65]

Moreover, certain plants are credited with a similar gift. In Germany

orant (whatever that may be), blue marjoram, and black cumin; and in

Denmark garlic--nasty enough surely to keep any beings off--and bread

are used. The Danes, too, place salt in the cradle or over the door. The

Italians fear not only fairies who rob them of their children, but also

witches who tear the faces of unbaptized infants. These are both old

superstitions, dating in one form or other from classic times. To baulk

the witches of their prey it is in some places customary to keep a light

burning in the chamber at night, and to affix at the door of the house

the image of a saint, hanging to it a rosary and an unravelled napkin;

while behind the door are put a jar full of salt and a brush. A twofold

defence is thus built up; for the witch, beholding the image of the

saint and the rosary, will straightway retire; or if these fail to warn

her off, she will on entering be compelled to count the grains of salt,

the broken threads of the napkin, and the twigs of the brush--a task

that will keep her occupied from midnight, when at the earliest she can

dare appear, until dawn, when she must slink away without having been

able to attain her object. Among the Greeks witches are believed to have

great power. They seek new-born babes to suck their blood or to prick

them to death with sharp instruments. Often they inflict such injuries

that a child remains for ever a cripple or an invalid. The Nereids of

the fountains and springs are also on the watch "to exchange one of

their own fractious offspring for a mortal babe." Constant watchfulness,

and baptism as soon as the Church permits it, are therefore necessary.

In England it seems to have been held in former days that witches stole

children from their cradles before baptism to make an oil or unguent by

boiling them to a jelly. A part of this jelly they used to drink, and

with the remainder they rubbed their bodies. This was the orthodox means

of acquiring magical powers. It is a Sicilian belief that the hands of

unbaptized children are used by witches in their sorceries.[66]

As we might expect, the reason why unbaptized babes are held to be so

liable to these attacks is that until the initiatory rite has been

performed they are looked upon as heathen, and therefore peculiarly

under the dominion of evil spirits. In Sicily and in Spain an infant

until baptism is called by the opprobrious epithets of _Pagan_, _Turk_,

_Moor_, _Jew_. Even women will not kiss it, for to kiss a Moor, at all

events in Spain, is sin; though, on the other hand, to kiss an

unbaptized child, if no one else have kissed it, is sovereign against

toothache. By the Greeks these little innocents are regarded not merely

as not Christians, but as really less human than demoniac in their

nature. This is said, indeed, to be the teaching of the Church. The

lower classes, at least (and, presumably therefore, not long ago the

upper classes) believe it firmly; so that an unbaptized babe is called

_Drakos_ (feminine, _Drakoula_), that is to say, serpent or dragon. This

is the same opprobrious title that we found Gervase of Tilbury applying

to the evil spirits infesting the waters of the Rhone; and we cannot

doubt that it is intended to convey an imputation of Satanic nature.[67]

The extent of this superstition would form an interesting subject of

inquiry. If it could be established as existing now or formerly among

other Christian nations (and the superstitions of Sicily and Spain just

cited point to this) it would help to clear up much of the difficulty

surrounding the subject of changelings, especially the motives actuating

both fairies and witches in their depredations. And, as infant baptism

is by no means exclusively a Christian rite, research among heathen

nations would be equally pertinent.

Meanwhile the motive usually assigned to fairies in northern stories is

that of preserving and improving their race, on the one hand by carrying

off human children to be brought up among the elves and to become united

with them, and on the other hand by obtaining the milk and fostering

care of human mothers for their own offspring. Doubts have been

expressed by the German poet and mythologist, Karl Simrock, whether this

was the primitive motive. He suggests that originally these spirits were

looked upon as wholly beneficent, and even the theft of children was

dictated by their care for the best interests of mankind. Nor does he

hesitate to lay it down that the selfish designs just mentioned were

first attributed to them when with growing enlightenment the feeling

manifested itself that the kindly beings were falling into decay.[68]

It might be sufficient to reply that no spiritual existences imagined by

men in a state of civilization such as surrounded our Celtic and

Teutonic forefathers were ever regarded as unswervingly benevolent:

caprice and vindictiveness, if not cruelty, are always elements of their

character. Beyond this general consideration, however, there is a

further and conclusive answer in the fact that there is no warrant in

tradition for the supposition that could we penetrate to the oldest

strata of mythical belief we should not discover selfish designs imputed

to "the good people." The distinguished commentator himself is bound to

admit that the belief in their need of human help is entwined in the

very roots of the Teutonic myths. It is, indeed, nothing but the

mediæval and Teutonic form of tenets common to all the nations upon

earth. The changeling superstition and the classic stories of children

and adults beloved by gods of high and low degree are consistent with

this belief, and inseparable from it. The motive is so far

comprehensible: what is wanted is to know whether any special relations,

such as are pointed at by the Greek epithet _Drakos_, were held to exist

between the mysterious world and newly-born babes which would render the

latter more obnoxious to attack than elder children or adults; or

whether, as I have put it at the beginning of this chapter, their

helplessness alone suggested their exceeding danger. To solve the riddle

we must wait for a larger accumulation of documents.[69]

But in the best regulated families it is not always possible to prevent

the abduction from being attempted, and sometimes accomplished, in spite

of every precaution. One night a Welsh woman, waking in a fright in her

husband's absence, missed her baby. She sought for it and caught it upon

the boards above the bed: the fairies had not succeeded in bearing it

any further away. Another felt her boy being taken from her arms;

whereupon she screamed and held him tightly, and, according to her own

expression, "God and me were too hard for them." The child grew up to

become a famous preacher. A peasant woman in Mecklenburg who ventured to

sleep without a light was attacked by an elf-woman. The stranger seized

the child, but was baffled by the woman's determination; for she

struggled and shrieked for her husband, and when he hurried in with a

light the fairy vanished.[70]

Nor is it always the mother who arrests the theft. A trick frequently

played by the dwarfs in Northern Germany on the birth of a child was to

pinch a cow's ear; and when the animal bellowed and everybody ran out to

know why, a dwarf would slip indoors and effect the change. On one such

occasion the father saw his infant being dragged out of the room. In the

nick of time he grasped it and drew it towards himself. The changeling

left in its place was found in the bed; and this he kept too, defying

the efforts of the underground folk to regain it. At a place in North

Jutland it happened many years ago in a lying-in room that the mother

could get no sleep while the lights were burning. So her husband

resolved to take the child in his arm, in order to keep strict watch

over it so long as it was dark. But, unfortunately, he fell asleep; and

on being awakened by a shake of the arm, he saw a tall woman standing by

the bed, and found that he had an infant in each arm. The woman

instantly vanished; and as he had forgotten in which arm he had held his

child, there he lay without knowing which of the two children was his

own. A boy, who was watching his younger sister while his parents were

both from home, saw a small man and woman come from behind the oven.

They told him to give them the little one; and when he refused they

stepped to the cradle and endeavoured to take the babe by force. The

boy, however, was strong and bold, and laid about him with such

determination that the robbers at length took to flight. On the

Lithuanian coast of the Baltic substantially the same tale is told with

more humour. There a farmer's boy sleeping in the living-room of the

house is awakened by the proceedings of two _laumes_, or elves. They

stealthily fetch out of the bedroom the new-born babe and swathe it in

swaddling clothes of their own, while they wrap in its clothes the

oven-broom. Then they began to quarrel which of them should carry the

broom thus rolled up into the bedroom; and as they were unable to agree

they resolved to carry it together. No sooner had they disappeared into

the inner apartment than the boy leaped out of bed, picked up his

mistress' child and took it into his own bed. When the _laumes_ returned

the infant was not to be found. They were both very angry and began to

scold one another: "It's your fault." "No, it's your fault; didn't I

say, You carry it, while I stay here and keep watch? I said it would be

stolen!" While they wrangled thus, kakary ku! crew the cock, and, foiled

and enraged, they had to make off. The boy had great difficulty in

wakening his mistress, who was in a deep sleep, dreaming a horrible

dream that a stock of wood had been placed on her breast so that she

could hardly breathe. He told her what had happened, but she would not

believe it until she saw that she had _two_ children--one to which she

had given birth, the other fashioned out of the oven-broom.[71]

Prayer and the utterance of a holy name are to the full as effectual as

physical strength. A fisherwoman in the north-east of Scotland was once

left alone in bed with her baby, when in came a little man dressed in

green, and proceeded to lay hold of the child. The woman knew at once

with whom she had to do, and ejaculated: "God be atween you an' me!" Out

rushed the fairy in a moment, and mother and babe were left without

further molestation. A curious tale is told of two Strathspey smugglers

who were one night laying in a stock of whiskey at Glenlivat when they

heard the child in the cradle give a piercing cry, just as if it had

been shot. The mother, of course, blessed it; and the Strathspey lads

took no further notice, and soon afterwards went their way with their

goods. Before they had gone far they found a fine healthy child lying

all alone on the roadside, and recognized it as their friend's. They saw

at once how the affair stood. The fairies had taken away the real infant

and left a stock; but owing to the pious ejaculation of the mother, they

had been forced to drop it. As the urgency of their business did not

admit of their return they took the child with them, and kept it until

they went to Glenlivat again. On their arrival here they said nothing

about the child, which they kept concealed. In the course of

conversation the woman remarked that the disease which had attacked the

little one the last time they were there had never left it, and she had

now scarce any hope of its recovery. As if to confirm her statement, it

continued uttering most piercing cries. The smugglers thereupon produced

the real babe healthy and hearty, and told her how they had found it.

The mother was, of course, pleased to recover it; and the next thing was

to dispose of the changeling. For this purpose the Strathspey lads got

an old creel to put him in and some straw to light under it. Seeing the

serious turn matters were likely to take he resolved not to await the

trial, but flew up the smoke-hole and cried out from the top that but

for the guests events would have gone very differently.[72]

Two pixies of Dartmoor, in the shape of large bundles of rags, led away

one of two children who were following their mother homeward. It was

eventually found, on a search being made by the neighbours with

lanterns, under a certain large oak tree known to be pixy-haunted. This

is hardly a changeling story, as no attempt was made to foist a false

child on the parent. A tale from the Isle of Man contains two similar

incidents of attempted robbery without replacing the stolen child by one

of superhuman birth. The fairies there adopted artifices like those of

the North German dwarfs above mentioned. A few nights after a woman had

been delivered of her first child a cry of fire was raised, and every

one ran out of the house to see whence it proceeded, leaving the

helpless mother alone with her babe. On returning they found the infant

lying on the threshold of the house. The following year, when another

little stranger had presented itself, a noise was heard in an out-house

among the cattle. Again everybody that was stirring, including the

nurse, hurried forth to learn what was the matter, believing that the

cattle had got loose. But finding all safe, they came back, only to

discover that the new-born babe had been taken out of bed, as the former

had been, and on their coming dropped in the middle of the entry. It

might have been supposed that these two warnings would have been enough;

but a third time the trick was played, and then more successfully.

Forgetting what had previously happened, all who were in the house ran

out one night on hearing a noise in the cow-house--all, that is, except

the mother, who could not move, and the nurse, who was sleeping off the

effects of alcohol. The former was lying broad awake and saw her child

lifted from the bed by invisible hands and carried clean away. She

shrieked at once to the nurse, but failed to arouse her; and when her

husband returned, an infant was indeed lying beside her, but a poor,

lean, withered, deformed creature, very different from her own. It lay

quite naked, though the clothes of the true child had been considerately

left for it by the ravishers.[73]

One of the difficulties experienced by the fairies on two of the three

occasions here narrated in making off with the little one occurred at

the door of the house. That they should have tried, repeatedly at all

events, to pass out that way is almost as remarkable as that they should

have been permitted more than once to attempt the theft. For the

threshold is a part of the dwelling which from of old has been held

sacred, and is generally avoided by uncanny beings. Wiser, though still

doomed to failure, were those Irish elves who lifted up a window and

handed the infant out. For it happened that a neighbour who was coming

to pay a visit that moment stopped before the house, and exclaimed: "God

keep all here from harm!" No sooner had she uttered the words than she

saw the child put forth, how, or by whom, she did not know; and without

hesitation she went up and took it away home with her. The next morning

when she called to see how her friend fared great was the moan made to

her over the behaviour of the child--so different from what it had ever

been before--crying all the night and keeping awake its mother, who

could not quiet it by any means. "I'll tell you what you'll do with the

brat," she replied; "whip it well first, and then bring it to the

cross-roads, and leave the fairy in the ditch there for any one to take

that pleases; for I have your child at home safe and sound as he was

handed out of the window last night to me." When the mother heard this,

she just stepped out to get a rod; but before she returned the

changeling had vanished, and no one either saw or heard of it again.[74]

Fairies, however, when bent upon mischief, are not always baulked so

easily. They effect the exchange, sometimes in the house, and sometimes

when the parent is at work in the fields and incautiously puts her

offspring down the while. In these circumstances, grievous as may be the

suspicion arising from the changed conduct of the nursling, it is not

always easy to be sure of what has taken place. Tests, therefore, have

to be applied. Often the appearance is enough. A "mighty big head," or

an abnormally thick head and neck, is in Germany deemed sufficient

credentials from Fairyland; while in a case from Lapland, where the hand

and foot grew so rapidly as to become speedily nearly half an ell in

length and the child was unable to learn to speak, whereas she readily

understood what was said to her, these deviations from the course of

nature were looked upon as conclusive evidence.[75] A reputed changeling

shown to Waldron in the Isle of Man early in the last century is thus

described: "Nothing under heaven could have a more beautiful face; but

though between five and six years old, and seemingly healthy, he was so

far from being able to walk, or stand, that he could not so much as move

any one joint; his limbs were vastly long for his age, but smaller than

an infant's of six months; his complexion was perfectly delicate, and he

had the finest hair in the world; he never spoke, nor cried, eat scarce

anything, and was very seldom seen to smile, but if any one called him a

fairy-elf, he would frown and fix his eyes so earnestly on those who

said it, as if he would look them through. His mother, or at least his

supposed mother, being very poor, frequently went out a-charing, and

left him a whole day together. The neighbours, out of curiosity, have

often looked in at the window to see how he behaved when alone, which,

whenever they did, they were sure to find him laughing and in the utmost

delight. This made them judge that he was not without company more

pleasing to him than any mortal's could be; and what made this

conjecture seem the more reasonable was, that if he were left ever so

dirty, the woman at her return saw him with a clean face, and his hair

combed with the utmost exactness and nicety."[76] Luther tells us that

he saw and touched at Dessau a changed child which was twelve years of

age. The account he gives of the child is that "he had his eyes and all

members like another child; he did nothing but feed, and would eat as

much as two clowns or threshers were able to eat. When one touched it,

then it cried out. When any evil happened in the house, then it laughed

and was joyful; but when all went well, then it cried and was very sad."

So much for the Reformer's testimony of what he saw and was told. His

theories and generalizations are in their way not less interesting than

his testimony: as might have been expected, they are an adaptation of

the ordinary superstitions to his own grim scheme of things. "Such

changelings and killcrops," he goes on to say, "_supponit Satan in locum

verorum filiorum_; for the devil hath this power, that he changeth

children, and instead thereof layeth devils in the cradles, which thrive

not, only they feed and suck: but such changelings live not above

eighteen or nineteen years. It sometimes falleth out that the children

of women in child-bed are thus changed, and Devils laid in their stead,

one of which more fouleth itself than ten other children do, so that

the parents are much therewith disquieted; and the mothers in such sort

are sucked out, that afterwards they are able to give suck no more."[77]

Making allowance for the influence of imagination, there can be no

doubt, on comparison of these passages, that the children to whom the

character of changelings was ascribed were invariably deformed or

diseased. The delightful author of the "Popular Romances of the West of

England" says that some thirty or forty years before the date of writing

he had seen several reputed changelings. And his evidence is express

that "in every case they have been sad examples of the influence of

mesenteric disease." After describing their external symptoms, he adds:

"The wasted frame, with sometimes strumous swellings, and the unnatural

abdominal enlargement which accompanies disease of mesenteric glands,

gives a very sad, and often a most unnatural, appearance to the

sufferer." Professor Rhys' description of a reputed changeling, one

Ellis Bach, of Nant Gwrtheyrn, in Carnarvonshire, is instructive as

showing the kind of being accredited among the Welsh with fairy nature.

The professor is repeating the account given to him of this poor

creature, who died nearly half a century ago. He tells us: "His father

was a farmer, whose children, both boys and girls, were like ordinary

folks, excepting Ellis, who was deformed, his legs being so short that

his body seemed only a few inches from the ground when he walked. His

voice was also small and squeaky. However, he was very sharp, and could

find his way among the rocks pretty well when he went in quest of his

father's sheep and goats, of which there used to be plenty there

formerly. Everybody believed Ellis to have been a changeling, and one

saying of his is well known in that part of the country. When strangers

visited Nant Gwrtheyrn, a thing which did not frequently happen, and

when his parents asked them to their table, and pressed them to eat, he

would squeak out drily: _'B'yta 'nynna b'yta'r cwbwl_,' that is to

say--'Eating--that means eating all.'" A changeling in Monmouthshire,

described by an eye-witness at the beginning of the present century, was

simply an idiot of a forbidding aspect, a dark, tawny complexion, and

much addicted to screaming.[78]

But a changeling was to be known in other ways than by his physical

defects; under careful management he might be led to betray himself in

speech or action. A Kirkcudbrightshire tale represents a child as once

left in charge of a tailor, who "commenced a discourse" with him.

"'Will, hae ye your pipes?' says the tailor. 'They're below my head,'

says the tenant of the cradle. 'Play me a spring,' says the tailor. Like

thought, the little man, jumping from the cradle, played round the room

with great glee. A curious noise was heard meantime outside; and the

tailor asked what it meant. The little elf called out: 'It's my folk

wanting me,' and away he fled up the chimney, leaving the tailor more

dead than alive." In the neighbouring county of Dumfries the story is

told with more gusto. The gudewife goes to the hump-backed tailor, and

says: "Wullie, I maun awa' to Dunse about my wab, and I dinna ken what

to do wi' the bairn till I come back: ye ken it's but a whingin',

screechin', skirlin' wallidreg--but we maun bear wi' dispensations. I

wad wuss ye,' quoth she, 'to tak tent till't till I come hame--ye sall

hae a roosin' ingle, and a blast o' the goodman's tobacco-pipe forbye.'

Wullie was naething laith, and back they gaed the-gither. Wullie sits

down at the fire, and awa' wi' her yarn gaes the wife; but scarce had

she steekit the door, and wan half-way down the close, when the bairn

cocks up on its doup in the cradle, and rounds in Wullie's lug: 'Wullie

Tylor, an' ye winna tell my mither when she comes back, I'se play ye a

bonny spring on the bagpipes.' I wat Wullie's heart was like to loup the

hool--for tylors, ye ken, are aye timorsome--but he thinks to himsel':

'Fair fashions are still best,' an' 'It's better to fleetch fules than

to flyte wi' them'; so he rounds again in the bairn's lug: 'Play up, my

doo, an' I'se tell naebody.' Wi' that the fairy ripes amang the cradle

strae, and pu's oot a pair o' pipes, sic as tylor Wullie ne'er had seen

in a' his days--muntit wi' ivory, and gold, and silver, and dymonts, and

what not. I dinna ken what spring the fairy played, but this I ken weel,

that Wullie had nae great goo o' his performance; so he sits thinkin' to

himsel': 'This maun be a deil's get, Auld Waughorn himsel' may come to

rock his son's cradle, and play me some foul prank;' so he catches the

bairn by the cuff o' the neck, and whupt him into the fire, bagpipes and

a'!"[79]

In Nithsdale the elf-child displays a superhuman power of work. The

mother left it on one occasion in the charge of a servant-girl, who sat

bemoaning herself. "Wer't nae for thy girning face I would knock the

big, winnow the corn, and grun the meal!" "Lowse the cradle band," cried

the child, "and tent the neighbours, an' I'll work yere wark." With that

he started up, the wind arose, the corn was winnowed, the outlyers were

foddered, the hand-mill moved around as by instinct, and the knocking

mell did its work with amazing rapidity. The lass and the elf meanwhile

took their ease, until, on the mistress's return, he was restored to the

cradle and began to yell anew.[80]

Most of the stories of changelings, in fact, assume that, though the

outward characteristics might justify vehement suspicion, yet they were

not absolutely decisive, and that to arrive at certainty the elf must be

brought to betray himself. No great subtlety, however, was needful; for

the stratagem employed varies but little, as the following examples will

show. The child of a married couple in Mecklenburg at two years of age

was no longer than a shoe, but had a mighty big head, and, withal, was

unable to learn to speak. Its parents were led by an old man to suspect

that it had been changed, and their adviser told them: "If you wish to

become certain, take an empty egg-shell, and in the child's presence

pour in new beer and cause it to ferment by means of yeast. If then the

child speak, my conjecture is right." His counsel was followed, and

scarcely had the beer fermented when the child cried out from the

cradle:

"I am as old

As Bohemian gold,

Yet for the first time now I see

Beer in an egg-shell brew'd to be."

The parents determined to fling the babe into the river the following

night; but when at midnight they rose for the purpose they found in the

cradle a strong, blooming child. In a Welsh tale from Radnorshire the

egg-shell is boiled full of pottage in the children's sight (there are

twins in this case) and taken out as a dinner for the reapers who

happened to be cutting the rye and oats. In Glamorganshire the woman

declares she is mixing a pasty for the reapers. An Icelandic legend

makes a woman set a pot containing food to cook on the fire and fasten

twigs end to end in continuation of the handle of a spoon until the

topmost one appears above the chimney, when she puts the bowl in the

pot. Another woman in a Danish tale engaged to drive a changeling out of

the house he troubled; and this is how she set about it. In his

temporary absence she killed a pig and made a black pudding of it, hide,

hair and all. On his return she set it before him, for he was a

prodigious eater. He began gobbling it up as usual; but as he ate his

efforts gradually slackened, and at last he sat quite still, eyeing it

thoughtfully. Then he exclaimed: "A pudding with hide! and a pudding

with hair! a pudding with eyes! and a pudding with bones in it! Thrice

have I seen a young wood spring upon Tiis Lake, but never yet did I see

such a pudding! The devil will stay here no longer!" And so saying he

ran off and never returned.[81]

Of these devices, however, the normal one is that of the egg-shells.

Sometimes one egg-shell only is employed, sometimes two--a dozen--or an

indefinite number. At seaside places, like Normandy and the Channel

Islands, egg-shells are sometimes replaced by shells of shell-fish.[82]

In all the stories the end is the same, namely, to excite the curiosity

and wonder of the imp to such a pitch that he gives expression to it in

language akin to that of the North German or the Danish tale just

quoted. The measure of age given in his exclamation is usually that of

the trees in the forest, or indeed the forest itself. In the instance

from Mecklenburg, Bohemian gold (_Böhmer Gold_) is made the measure, and

this runs through quite a number of Low Dutch stories. There can be

little doubt, however, that it is a corruption, and that the true form

is, as given in a Schleswig-Holstein tale, Bohemian Forest (_Behmer

Woelt_).[83] In Hesse Wester Forest (_Westerwald_) is found, and so on

in other countries, the narrator in each case referring to some wood

well known to his audience. The Lithuanian elf, or _laumes_, says: "I am

so old, I was already in the world before the Kamschtschen Wood was

planted, wherein great trees grew, and _that_ is now laid waste again;

but anything so wonderful I have never seen." In Normandy the changeling

declares: "I have seen the Forest of Ardennes burnt seven times, but I

never saw so many pots boil." The astonishment of a Scandinavian imp

expressed itself even more graphically, for when he saw an egg-shell

boiling on the fire having one end of a measuring rod set in it, he

crept out of the cradle on his hands, leaving his feet still inside, and

stretched himself out longer and longer until he reached right across

the floor and up the chimney, when he exclaimed: "Well! seven times have

I seen the wood fall in Lessö Forest, but never till now have I seen so

big a ladle in so small a pot!" And the Danish story I have cited above

represents the child as saying that he has seen a young wood thrice upon

Tiis Lake.[84] The Welsh fairies are curiously youthful compared with

these hoary infants, which is all the more remarkable when the daring

exaggerations of Cambrian story-tellers are considered. It is a modest

claim only to have seen the acorn before the oak and the egg before the

hen, yet that is all that is put forward. In one of the Lays of Marie de

France the wood of Brézal is indicated as the spot where the oak was

seen.[85] The formula thus variously used would appear to be a common

one to describe great antiquity, and in all probability itself dates

back to a very remote period.

But changelings frequently conform to the more civilized usage of

measuring their age by years. And various are the estimates given us,

from fifteen hundred years in the Emerald Isle down to the computation,

erring perhaps on the other side, of the young gentleman in the English

tale, who remarks: "Seven years old was I before I came to the nurse,

and four years have I lived since, and never saw so many milk-pans

before." A yet more mysterious hint as to her earlier life is dropped by

an imp in Brittany. She has been treated to the sight of milk boiling in

egg-shells, and cries: "I shall soon be a hundred years old, but I never

saw so many shells boiling! I was born in Pif and in Paf, in the country

where cats are made; but I never saw anything like it!"[86] To all

right-minded persons this disclosure contained sufficient warrant for

her reputed mother to repudiate her as a witch, though cats are no less

intimate with fairies than with conjurers.

Simrock, in his work on German mythology already cited, inclines to the

opinion that the object of the ceremony which the suspected child is

made to witness is to produce laughter. He says: "The dwarf is no

over-ripe beauty who must keep her age secret. Rather something

ridiculous must be done to cause him to laugh, because laughter brings

deliverance."[87] The problem set before the heroes of many folk-tales

is to compel laughter, but that does not seem to be intended in these

changeling stories. At least I have only met with it in one, and it

certainly is not common. The confession of age which the ceremony draws

forth is really much more. It is a confession that the apparently human

babe is an imposture, that it belongs in fact to a different race, and

has no claim on the mother's care and tenderness. Therefore it is not

always enough for the fraud to be discovered: active means must

sometimes be taken to rid the family of their supernatural burden and

regain their own little one. In Grimm's story, in which the child

laughs, a host of elves comes suddenly bringing back the true and

carrying away the false one; and in many of the German and Northern

tales the changeling disappears in one way or other immediately after

its exclamation. We are sometimes even told in so many words that the

changeling had betrayed himself, and the underground folk were obliged

to give back the stolen child. And in the Lithuanian story we have cited

the _laumes_ straightway falls sick and dies.[88] Such conduct accords

entirely with the resentment at being recognized which we have in a

previous chapter found to be a characteristic of spiritual existences.

It is much more like the dislike of being found out attributed to beings

who are in the habit of walking invisible, than any mystical effect of

laughter.

If this be so, still less do the stories where it is required actually

to drive the imp away support the learned German's contention. The means

taken in these stories are very various. Sometimes it is enough to let

the child severely alone, as once in the Isle of Man where a woman laid

her child down in the field while she was cutting corn, and a fairy

changed it there and then. The changeling began to scream, but the

mother was prevented by a man who had been a witness to the transaction

from picking it up; and when the fairy found that no notice was taken

the true child was brought back. In the island of Lewis the custom was

to dig a grave in the fields on Quarter Day and lay the goblin in it

until the next morning, by which time it was believed the human babe

would be returned. In the north of Germany one is advised not to touch

the changeling with the hands, but to overturn the cradle so that the

child falls on the floor. The elf must then be swept out of the door

with an old broom, when the dwarfs will come and bring back the stolen

child. Putting it on the dunghill and leaving it there to cry has been

practised successfully in England; but in Ireland this is only one part

of a long and serious ceremony directed by a wizard or "fairy-man." In

dealing with these stories we must always remember that not merely are

we concerned with sagas of something long past, but with a yet living

superstition, and that the practices I am about to mention--even the

most cruel and the most ridiculous of them--so far respond to the actual

beliefs of the people that instances of their occurrence are quite

recent and well authenticated, as we shall presently see. An anonymous

but well-informed writer describes, as if it were by no means an unusual

ceremony, that just referred to; and Kennedy gives the same in the shape

of a legend. It seems to consist in taking a clean shovel and seating

the changeling on its broad iron blade, and thus conveying the creature

to the manure heap. The assistants would then join hands and circle

about the heap thrice while the fairy-man chanted an incantation in the

Irish language. At its conclusion all present would withdraw into the

house, leaving the child where it had been placed, to howl and cry as it

pleased. Says Mr. Kennedy: "They soon felt the air around them sweep

this way and that, as if it was stirred by the motion of wings, but

they remained quiet and silent for about ten minutes. Opening the door,

they then looked out, and saw the bundle of straw on the heap, but

neither child nor fairy. 'Go into your bedroom, Katty,' said the

fairy-man, 'and see if there's anything left on the bed!' She did so,

and they soon heard a cry of joy, and Katty was among them in a moment,

kissing and hugging her own healthy-looking child, who was waking and

rubbing his eyes, and wondering at the lights and all the eager

faces."[89]

Whether it was the noise made by the child or the incantation that drew

the "good people's" attention, we are left in doubt by this story. A

Norman woman was, however, advised to make her child cry lustily "in

order to bring its _real_ mother to it." And this is probably the

meaning of the many tales in which the elf is beaten, or starved and

subjected to other ill-usage, or is threatened with death.[90] In the

Pflöckenstein Lake in Bohemia wild women are believed to dwell, who,

among other attributes common to elves or fairies, are believed to

change infants. In order to compel a re-exchange, directions are given

to bind with a weed growing at the bottom of the lake and to beat with a

rod of the same, calling out therewithal: "Take thine own and bring me

mine." A mother in a Little Russian tale had a baby of extraordinary

habits. When alone, he jumped out of the cradle, no longer a baby but a

bearded old man, gobbled up the food out of the stove, and then lay down

again a screeching babe. A wise woman who was consulted placed him on a

block of wood and began to chop the block under his feet. He screeched

and she chopped; he screeched and she chopped; until he became an old

man again and made the enigmatical confession: "I have transformed

myself not once nor twice only. I was first a fish, then I became a

bird, an ant, and a quadruped, and now I have once more made trial of

being a human being. It isn't better thus than being among the ants; but

among human beings--it isn't worse!" Here the chopping was evidently a

threat to kill. Nor, if we may trust the stories, was this threat always

an empty one. The changeling fashioned out of a broom in the Lithuanian

story already cited, was disposed of, by the parish priest's advice, by

hewing its head off. The reason given by the holy man was that it was

not yet four and twenty hours old, and it would not be really alive

until the expiration of that time. Accordingly when the neck was severed

nothing but a wisp of straw was found inside, though blood flowed as if

there were veins.[91]

But even more truculent methods are represented by the story-tellers as

resorted to free the afflicted household. Nothing short of fire is

often deemed sufficient for the purpose. There were various methods of

applying it. Sometimes we are told of a shovel being made red-hot and

held before the child's face; sometimes he is seated on it and flung out

into the dung-pit, or into the oven; or again, the poker would be heated

to mark the sign of the cross on his forehead, or the tongs to take him

by the nose. Or he is thrown bodily on the fire, or suspended over it in

a creel or a pot; and in the north of Scotland the latter must be hung

from a piece of the branch of a hazel tree. In this case we are told

that if the child screamed it was a changeling, and it was held fast to

prevent its escape. Generally, however, it is related that the elf

flies up the chimney, and when safely at the top he stops to make

uncomplimentary remarks upon his persecutors. In the Nithsdale story

which I have already cited, the servant girl at midnight covers up the

chimney and every other inlet, makes the embers glowing hot, and

undressing the changeling tosses it on them. In answer to its yells the

fairies are heard moaning and rattling at the window boards, the

chimney-head, and the door. "In the name o' God, bring back the bairn,"

she exclaims. In a moment up flew the window, the human child was laid

unharmed on the mother's lap, while its guilty substitute flew up the

chimney with a loud laugh.[92]

Frightful as this cruelty would seem to every one if perpetrated on the

mother's own offspring, it was regarded with equanimity as applied to a

goblin; and it is not more frightful than what has been actually

perpetrated on young children, and that within a very few years, under

the belief that they were beings of a different race. Instances need not

be multiplied; it will be enough to show that one of the horrible

methods of disposing of changelings referred to in the last paragraph

came under judicial notice no longer ago than the month of May 1884. Two

women were reported in the "Daily Telegraph" as having been arrested at

Clonmel on the 17th of that month, charged with cruelly ill-treating a

child three years old. The evidence given was to the effect that the

neighbours fancied that the child, who had not the use of his limbs, was

a changeling. During the mother's absence the prisoners accordingly

entered her house and placed the child naked on a hot shovel, "under the

impression that this would break the charm." As might have been

expected the poor little thing was severely burnt, and, when the women

were apprehended, it was in a precarious condition. The prisoners, on

being remanded, were hooted by an indignant crowd. It might be thought

that this was an indication of the decay of superstition, even in

Ireland, however much to be condemned as an outburst of feeling against

unconvicted and even untried persons. But we must regard it rather as a

protest against the prisoners' inhumanity than against their

superstition: in either case, of course, the product of advancing

civilization. For if we may trust the witness of other sagas we find the

trial by fire commuted to a symbolic act, as though men had begun to be

revolted by the cruelty, even when committed only on a fairy who had

been found out, but were unwilling to abandon their belief in the power

of the exorcism. In the north-east of Scotland, for example, where a

beggar, who had diagnosed a changeling, was allowed to try his hand at

disposing of it, he made a large fire on the hearth and held a black hen

over it till she struggled, and finally escaped from his grasp, flying

out by the "lum." More minute directions are given by the cunning man in

a Glamorganshire tale. After poring over his big book, he told his

distracted client to find a black hen without a single feather of any

other colour. This she was to bake (not living, but dead, as appears by

the sequel) before a fire of wood (not, as usual, of peat), with

feathers and all intact. Every window and opening was to be closed,

except one--presumably the chimney; and she was not to watch the

_crimbil_, or changeling, until the hen had been done enough, which she

would know by the falling off of all her feathers. The more knowing

woman, in an Irish story, attributes the fact of the infant's being

changed to the Evil Eye; and her directions for treatment require the

mother to watch for the woman who has given it the Evil Eye, inveigle

her into the house and cut a piece secretly out of her cloak. This piece

of the cloak was then to be burnt close to the child until the smoke

made him sneeze, when the spell would be broken and her own child

restored. The writer who records this tale mentions the following mode

of proceeding as a common one, namely: to place the babe in the middle

of the cabin and light a fire round it, fully expecting it to be changed

into a sod of turf, but manifestly not intending to do bodily harm to it

independently of any such change. In Carnarvonshire a clergyman is

credited with telling a mother to cover a shovel with salt, mark a cross

in the salt, and burn it in the chamber where the child was, judiciously

opening the window first.[93] It is satisfactory to know that, so far as

the recorded cases go, the ceremony lost nothing of its power by being

thus toned down.

Fire, however, was not the only element efficacious for turning to

flight these troublesome aliens. Water's antagonism to witches is

notorious; and ample use was made of it in the old witch trials. It is

equally obnoxious to fairies and their congeners. In a Welsh story from

Radnorshire, when the mother has been by the egg-shell device convinced

of the exchange of her own twin children, she takes the goblin twins and

flings them into Llyn Ebyr; but their true kinsmen clad in blue trousers

(their usual garb) save them, and the mother receives her own again. In

other tales she drops the twins into the river; but in one case the

witch who has been credited with the change bathes the child at a

mountain spout, or _pistyll_, and exacts a promise from the mother to

duck him in cold water every morning for three months. It is not very

surprising to learn that "at the end of that time there was no finer

infant in the Cwm."[94]

There is an oft-quoted passage in Luther's "Table Talk," in which he

relates that he told the Prince of Anhalt that if he were prince he

would venture _homicidium_ upon a certain changeling with which he had

been brought into contact, and throw it into the river Moldaw. The great

Reformer was only on a level with his countrymen in their superstitions

in reference to changelings, or Killcrops, as they were then called. I

have already quoted his opinion of them as devils; and the test of their

true nature, which he seems to have thought infallible, was their

inordinate appetite; nor did he attach any value to baptism as a means

of exorcism. One excellent tale he tells on the subject concerns a

peasant who lived near Halberstadt, in Saxony. This good man, in

accordance with advice, was taking the child to Halberstadt to be rocked

at the shrine of the Virgin Mary, when in crossing a river another devil

that was below in the river called out "Killcrop! Killcrop!" Then, says

Luther, the child in the basket, that had never before spoken one word,

answered "Ho, ho!" The devil in the water asked, "Whither art thou

going?" and the child replied, "I am going to Halberstadt to our Loving

Mother, to be rocked." In his fright the man threw the basket containing

the child over the bridge into the water, whereupon the two devils flew

away together and cried "Ho, ho, ha!" tumbling themselves one over

another, and so vanished.[95] This may be taken as a type of many a

story current in North Germany and the neighbouring Slavonic lands. It

is not, however, unknown in this country. Mr. Hunt has versified a

Cornish tale in which the mother took her brat to the chapel well to

plunge it at dawn and pass it round slowly three times _against_ the

sun, as she had been advised to do on the first three Wednesdays in the

month of May. Reaching the top of the hill on one of these occasions,

she heard a shrill voice in her ear: "Tredrill, Tredrill! thy wife and

children greet thee well." The little one of course replied, much to her

astonishment, repudiating all concern for his wife and children, and

intimating his enjoyment of the life he was leading, and the spell that

was being wrought in his behalf. In the end she got rid of him by the

homely process of beating and leaving him on the ground near the old

church stile. A Sutherlandshire tradition tells of a child less than a

year old who suddenly addressed his mother in verse as he was being

carried through a wild glen. Translated, the youth's impromptu lines run

thus:--

"Many is the dun hummel cow

(Each having a calf)

In the opposite dun glen,

Without the aid of dog,

Or man, or woman, or gillie,

One man excepted,

And he grey----"

At that moment his remarks were interrupted by the terrified woman

throwing him down in the plaid which wrapt him, and scampering home,

where to her joy she found her true babe smiling in the cradle.[96]

These verses carry us back to the egg-shell episode, from which the

consideration of the means adopted to drive away the intrusive goblin

has diverted us. They contain a vague assertion of age like those then

before us, but not a hint of laughter. Nor have we found anything

throughout the whole discussion to favour Simrock's suggestion, or to

shake the opinion that the dissolution of the fairy spell was derived

either from the vexation of the supernatural folk at their own

self-betrayal, or from the disclosure to the human foster-parents of

the true state of the facts, and their consequent determination to

exorcise the demon.

It is true we have a few more stories to examine, but we shall find that

they all confirm this conclusion. The cases we have yet to deal with,

except the first, exhibit a different and much more humane treatment of

the changeling than the foregoing. The case excepted is found in

Carnarvonshire, where one infallible method of getting rid of the child

was to place it on the floor and let all present in the house throw a

piece of iron at it. The old woman who mentioned this to Professor Rhys

conjectured that the object was to convince the _Tylwyth Teg_, or fairy

people, of the intention to kill the babe, in order to induce them to

bring the right child back.[97] This would be the same motive as that

which threatened death by fire or other ill-usage, in some of the

instances mentioned above. But we could not thus account for the

requirement that iron, and only iron, was to be used; and here we have,

in fact, a superstition carefully preserved, while its meaning has quite

passed out of memory. In a future chapter we shall examine the attitude

of mythical beings in folklore to metals, and especially to iron; in the

meantime we may content ourselves with noting this addition to the

examples we have already met with of the horror with which they regarded

it.

So far from its being always deemed wise to neglect or injure the

changeling, it was not infrequently supposed to be necessary to take the

greatest care of it, thereby and by other means to propitiate its elvish

tribe. This was the course pursued with the best results by a Devonshire

mother; and a woman at Strassberg, in North Germany, was counselled by

all her gossips to act lovingly, and above all not to beat the imp, lest

her own little one be beaten in turn by the underground folk. So in a

Hessian tale mentioned by Grimm, a _wichtel-wife_ caught almost in the

act of kidnapping refused to give up the babe until the woman had placed

the changed one to her breast, and "nourished it for once with the

generous milk of human kind." In Ireland, even when the child is placed

on a dunghill, the charm recited under the direction of the "fairy-man"

promises kindly entertainment in future for the "gambolling crew," if

they will only undo what they have done. A method in favour in the north

of Scotland is to take the suspected elf to some known haunt of its

race, generally, we are told, some spot where peculiar soughing sounds

are heard, or to some barrow, or stone circle, and lay it down,

repeating certain incantations the while. What the words of these

incantations are we are not informed, but we learn that an offering of

bread, butter, milk, cheese, eggs, and flesh of fowl must accompany the

child. The parents then retire for an hour or two, or until after

midnight; and if on returning these things have disappeared, they

conclude that the offering is accepted and their own child returned.[98]

Neither ill-usage nor kindness, neither neglect nor propitiation, was

sometimes prescribed and acted upon, but--harder than either--a journey

to Fairyland to fetch back the captive. A man on the island of Rügen,

whose carelessness had occasioned the loss of his child, watched until

the underground dwellers sallied forth on another raid, when he hastened

to the mouth of the hole that led into their realm, and went boldly

down. There in the Underworld he found the child, and thus the robbers

were forced to take their own again instead. In a more detailed

narrative from Islay, the father arms himself with a Bible, a dirk, and

a crowing cock, and having found the hill where the "Good People" had

their abode open, and filled with the lights and sounds of festival, he

approached and stuck the dirk into the threshold. The object of this was

to prevent the entrance from closing upon him. Then he steadily

advanced, protected from harm by the Bible at his breast. Within, his

boy (who was thirteen or fourteen years of age) was working at the

forge; but when the man demanded him the elves burst into a loud laugh,

which aroused the cock in his arms. The cock at once leaped upon his

shoulders, flapped his wings, and crowed loud and long. The enraged

elves thereupon cast the man and his son both out of the hill, and flung

the dirk after them; and in an instant all was dark. It should be added

that for a year and a day afterwards the boy did no work, and scarcely

spoke; but he ultimately became a very famous smith, the inventor of a

specially fine and well-tempered sword. The changeling himself in one of

Lady Wilde's tales directs his foster-mother to Fairyland. The way

thither was down a well; and she was led by the portress, an old woman,

into the royal palace. There the queen admits that she stole the child,

"for he was so beautiful," and put her own instead. The re-exchange is

effected, and the good woman is feasted with food which the fairies

cannot touch, because it has been sprinkled with salt. When she found

herself again at home, she fancied she had only been away an hour: it

was three years.[99]

But it was not always necessary to incur the risk of going as far as the

other world. The Glamorganshire woman, whose successful cooking of a

black hen has been already referred to, had first to go at full moon to

a place where four roads met, and hide herself to watch the fairy

procession which passed at midnight. There in the midst of the music and

the _Bendith eu mammau_ she beheld her own dear little child. One of the

most interesting changeling stories was gravely related in the "Irish

Fireside" for the 7th of January 1884, concerning a land-leaguer who

had been imprisoned as a suspect under the then latest Coercion Act.

When this patriot was a boy he had been stolen by the fairies, one of

themselves having been left in his place. The parish priest, however,

interfered; and by a miracle he caused the elf for a moment to

disappear, and the boy to return to tell him the conditions on which his

captivity might be ended. The information given, the goblin again

replaced the true son; but the good priest was now able to deal

effectually with the matter. The imp was accordingly dipped thrice in

Lough Lane (a small lake in the eastern part of Westmeath), when "a curl

came on the water, and up from the deep came the naked form of the boy,

who walked on the water to meet his father on shore. The father wrapped

his overcoat about his son, and commenced his homeward march,

accompanied by a line of soldiers, who also came out of the lake. The

boy's mother was enjoined not to speak until the rescuing party would

reach home. She accidentally spoke; and immediately the son dropped a

tear, and forced himself out of his father's arms, piteously exclaiming:

'Father, father, my mother spoke! You cannot keep me. I must go.' He

disappeared, and, reaching home, the father found the sprite again on

the hearth." The ghostly father's services were called into requisition

a second time; and better luck awaited an effort under his direction

after the performance of a second miracle like the first. For this time

the mother succeeded in holding her tongue, notwithstanding that at

every stream on the way home from the lake the car on which the boy was

carried was upset, and he himself fainted.[100] This is declared to have

happened no longer ago than the year 1869. The writer, apparently a

pious Roman Catholic, who vouches for the fact, probably never heard the

touching tale of Orpheus and Eurydice.

The foregoing story, as well as some of those previously mentioned,

shows that fairy depredations were by no means confined to babes and

young children. Indeed adults were often carried off; and, although this

chapter is already far too long, I cannot close it without briefly

examining a few such cases. Putting aside those, then, in which boys or

young men have been taken, as already sufficiently discussed, all the

other cases of robbery, as distinguished from seduction or illusion, are

concerned with matrons. The elfin race were supposed to be on the watch

for unchurched or unsained mothers to have the benefit of their milk. In

one instance the captive was reputed to have freed herself by promising

in exchange her husband's best mare under milk, which was retained by

the captors until it was exhausted and almost dead. More usually the

story relates that a piece of wood is carved in the likeness of the lady

and laid in her place, the husband and friends being deceived into

believing it to be herself. A man returning home at night overhears the

supernatural beings at work. He listens and catches the words: "Mak' it

red cheekit an' red lippit like the smith o' Bonnykelly's wife."

Mastering the situation he runs off to the smith's house, and sains the

new mother and her babe. And he is only just in time, for hardly has he

finished than a great thud is heard outside. On going out a piece of

bog-fir is found,--the image the fairies intended to substitute for the

smith's wife. In North German and Danish tales it is the husband who

overhears the conspirators at work, and he often has coolness enough to

watch their proceedings on his return home and, bouncing out upon them,

to catch them just as they are about to complete their crime. Thus, one

clever fellow succeeded in retaining both his wife and the image already

put into her bed, which he thrust into the oven to blaze and crackle in

the sight and hearing of his wife's assembled friends, who supposed he

was burning her until he produced her to their astonished gaze. A tale

from Badenoch represents the man as discovering the fraud from finding

his wife, a woman of unruffled temper, suddenly turned a shrew. So he

piles up a great fire and threatens to throw the occupant of the bed

upon it unless she tells him what has become of his own wife. She then

confesses that the latter has been carried off, and she has been

appointed successor; but by his determination he happily succeeds in

recapturing his own at a certain fairy knoll near Inverness.[101]

It happens occasionally that these victims of elfin gallantry are

rescued by other men than their husbands. A smith at work one day hears

a great moaning and sobbing out of doors. Looking out he sees a troll

driving a pregnant woman before him, and crying to her continually: "A

little further yet! a little further yet!" He instantly springs forward

with a red-hot iron in his hand, which he holds between the troll and

his thrall, so that the former has to abandon her and take to flight.

The smith then took the woman under his protection, and the same night

she was delivered of twins. Going to the husband to console him for his

loss, he is surprised to find a woman exactly resembling his friend's

wife in her bed. He saw how the matter stood, and seizing an axe he

killed the witch on the spot, and restored to the husband his real wife

and new-born children. This is a Danish legend; but there is a Highland

one very similar to it. A man meets one night a troop of fairies with a

prize of some sort. Recollecting that fairies are obliged to exchange

whatever they may have with any one who offers them anything, no matter

what its value, for it, he flings his bonnet to them, calling out: "Mine

is yours, and yours is mine!" The prize which they dropped turned out to

be an English lady whom they had carried off, leaving in her place a

stock, which, of course, died and was buried. The Sassenach woman lived

for some years in the Highlander's house, until the captain in command

of an English regiment came to lodge in his house with his son, while

the soldiers were making new roads through the country. There the son

recognized his mother, and the father his wife long mourned as

dead.[102]

The death and burial of changelings, though, as here, occurring in the

tales, are not often alluded to; and there are grounds for thinking them

a special deduction of the Scottish mind. Sometimes the incident is

ghastly enough to satisfy the devoted lover of horrors. The west of

Scotland furnishes an instance in which the exchange was not discovered

until after the child's apparent death. It was buried in due course; but

suspicion having been aroused, the grave and coffin were opened, and not

a corpse but only a wooden figure was found within. A farmer at Kintraw,

in Argyllshire, lost his wife. On the Sunday after the funeral, when he

and his servants returned from church, the children, who had been left

at home, reported that their mother had been to see them, and had combed

and dressed them. The following Sunday they made the same statement, in

spite of the punishment their father had thought proper to inflict for

telling a lie on the first occasion. The next time she came the eldest

child asked her why she came, when she said that she had been carried

off by "the good people," and could only get away for an hour or two on

Sundays, and should her coffin be opened it would be found to contain

nothing but a withered leaf. The minister, however, who ridiculed the

story, refused to allow the coffin to be opened; and when, some little

time after, he was found dead near the Fairies' Hill, above Kintraw, he

was held by many to be a victim to the indignation of the fairy world he

had laughed at. Sir Walter Scott mentions the tale of a farmer's wife

in Lothian, who, after being carried off by the fairies, reappeared

repeatedly on Sunday to her children, and combed their hair. On one of

these occasions the husband met her, and was told that there was one way

to recover her, namely, by lying in wait on Hallowe'en for the

procession of fairies, and stepping boldly out, and seizing her as she

passed among them. At the moment of execution, however, his heart

failed, and he lost his wife for ever. In connection with this, Scott

refers to a real event which happened at the town of North Berwick. A

widower, who was paying addresses with a view to second marriage, was

troubled by dreams of his former wife, to whom he had been tenderly

attached. One morning he declared to the minister that she had appeared

to him the previous night, stating that she was a captive in Fairyland,

and begged him to attempt her deliverance. The mode she prescribed was

to bring the minister and certain others to her grave at midnight to dig

up her body, and recite certain prayers, after which the corpse would

become animated and flee from him. It was to be pursued by the swiftest

runner in the parish, and if he could catch it before it had encircled

the church thrice, the rest were to come to his help and hold it

notwithstanding its struggles, and the shapes into which it might be

transformed. In this way she would be redeemed. The minister, however,

declined to take part in so absurd and indecent a proceeding.[103]

Absurd and indecent it would undoubtedly have been to unearth a dead

body in the expectation of any such result; but it would have been

entirely in harmony with current superstition. The stories and beliefs

examined in the present chapter prove that there has been no

superstition too gross, or too cruel, to survive into the midst of the

civilization of the nineteenth century; and the exhumation of a corpse,

of the two, is less barbarous than the torture by fire of an innocent

child. The flight, struggles, and transformation of a bespelled lady are

found both in _märchen_ and saga: some examples of the latter will come

under our notice in a future chapter.

FOOTNOTES:

[60] The belief in changelings is not confined to Europe, though the

accounts we have of it elsewhere are meagre. It is found, as we shall

see further on, in China. It is found also among the natives of the

Pacific slopes of North America, where it is death to the mother to

suckle the changeling. Dorman, p. 24, citing Bancroft.

[61] See a curious Scottish ballad given at length, "F. L. Record," vol.

i. p. 235; Henderson, p. 15; "Cymru Fu N. and Q." vol. ii. p. 144;

Gregor, p. 11 (_cf._ Harland and Wilkinson, p. 221); Cromek, p. 247. See

Webster, p. 73, where a witch carries away a child who is not blessed

when it sneezes.

[62] Napier, p. 40; "F. L. Journal," vol. i. p. 56; Kuhn, pp. 365, 196;

Knoop, p. 155; "Zeits. f. Volksk." vol. ii. p. 33; Kennedy, p. 95;

Carnoy, p. 4; "F. L. Journal," vol. ii. p. 257.

[63] Bartsch, vol. i. pp. 64, 89; vol. ii. p. 43; Kuhn, p. 195; Knoop,

_loc. cit._; Jahn, pp. 52, 71; Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 174; "Zeits. f.

Volksk." vol. ii. _loc. cit._ W. Map, Dist. ii. c. 14; Brand, vol. ii.

p. 8, note; Lady Wilde, vol. i. pp. 71, 73; Schleicher, p. 93;

Tertullian, "Adv. Nationes," l. ii. c. 11; Brand, vol. ii. p. 334 note,

quoting Martin, "History of the Western Islands"; Train, vol. ii. p.

132; "Sacred Books of the East," vol. xxiv. p. 277. As to the use of

fire in China, see "F. L. Journal," vol. v. p. 225; and generally as to

the efficacy of fire in driving off evil spirits see Tylor, vol. ii. p.

177.

[64] Grimm, "Teut. Myth." p. 468; Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 2, vol. iii. p.

45; Train, vol. ii. p. 133; Garnett, pp. 231, 315; "F. L. Journal," vol.

v. p. 225. In Eastern Prussia a steel used for striking a light, a

hammer, or anything else that will strike fire, is used. This seems to

combine the dread of steel with that of fire (Lemke, p. 41).

[65] Grimm, "Teut. Myth." _loc. cit._; Train, vol. ii. _loc. cit._;

Henderson, p. 14; "F. L. Journal," vol. v. p. 224; "Zeits. f. Volksk."

vol. ii, p. 33; "N. and Q." 7th ser. vol. x. p. 185.

[66] Henderson, _loc. cit._; Bartsch, vol. ii. p. 192; Pitré, vol. xv.

pp. 154 note, 155; vol. xvii. p. 102, quoting Castelli, "Credenze ed

usi"; Horace, "Ep. ad Pison," v. 340; Dorsa, p. 146; Wright, "Middle

Ages," vol. i. p. 290; Garnett, p. 70; "Mélusine," vol. v. p. 90,

quoting English authorities. Map, Dist. ii. c. 14, gives a story of

babies killed by a witch. St. Augustine records that the god Silvanus

was feared as likely to injure women in child-bed, and that for their

protection three men were employed to go round the house during the

night and to strike the threshold with a hatchet and a pestle and sweep

it with a brush; and he makes merry over the superstition ("De Civ.

Dei," l. vi. c. 9).

[67] Pitré, vol. xii. p. 304, note; vol. xv. p. 154; "F. L. Españ." vol.

ii. p. 51; De Gubernatis, "Usi Natal." p. 219, quoting Bézoles, "Le

Baptême."

[68] Bartsch, vol. i. p. 46; Jahn, p. 89; Grimm, "Teut. Myth." p. 468;

Simrock, p. 418.

[69] There is another motive for the robbery of a human creature,

mentioned only, I think, in the Romance of Thomas the Rhymer, namely,

that at certain seasons the foul fiend fetches his fee, or tribute of a

living soul, from among the underground folk. Several difficulties arise

upon this; but it is needless to discuss them until the motive in

question be found imputed elsewhere than in a literary work of the

fifteenth century, and ballads derived therefrom.

Since the foregoing note was written my attention has been drawn to the

following statement in Lady Wilde, vol. i. p. 70: "Sometimes it is said

the fairies carry off the mortal child for a sacrifice, as they have to

offer one every seven years to the devil in return for the power he

gives them. And beautiful young girls are carried off, also, either for

sacrifice or to be wedded to the fairy king." It is easier to generalize

in this manner than to produce documents in proof. And I think I am

expressing the opinion of all folklore students when I say that, with

all respect for Lady Wilde, I would rather not lay any stress upon her

general statements. Indeed, those of anybody, however great an

authority, need to be checked by the evidence of particular instances. I

await such evidence.

[70] Sikes, p. 62; _cf._ Brand, vol. ii. p. 334 note; Bartsch, vol. i.

p. 46.

[71] Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 175; vol. iii. p. 43; Kuhn, p. 195; Schleicher,

p. 92.

[72] Gregor, p. 61; Keightley, p. 393; Campbell, vol. ii. p. 64.

[73] Hunt, p. 96; Waldron, p. 30. This account was given to the author

by the mother herself.

[74] Croker, p. 81. See a similar tale in Campbell, vol. ii. p. 58.

Gregor, p. 61, mentions the dog-hole as the way by which children are

sometimes carried off.

[75] Bartsch, vol. i. p. 46; Kuhn, p. 196; Grimm, "Teut. Myth." p. 468;

Poestion, p. 114; Grohmann, p. 113.

[76] Waldron, p. 29. The same writer gives a similar account of the

changeling mentioned above, p. 107.

[77] "Colloquia Mensalia," quoted by Southey, "The Doctor" (London,

1848), p. 621. As to the attribute of greed, _cf._ Keightley, p. 125.

[78] Hunt, p. 85; "Y Cymmrodor," vol. vi. p. 175; Rev. Edmund Jones, "A

Relation of Apparitions," quoted by Wirt Sikes, p. 56. Thiele relates a

story in which a wild stallion colt is brought in to smell two babes,

one of which is a changeling. Every time he smells one he is quiet and

licks it; but on smelling the other he is invariably restive and strives

to kick it. The latter, therefore, is the changeling. (Thorpe, vol. ii.

p. 177.) Sir John Maundeville also states that in Sicily is a kind of

serpent whereby men assay the legitimacy of their children. If the

children be illegitimate the serpents bite and kill them; if otherwise

they do them no harm--an easy and off-hand way of getting rid of them!

("Early Trav." p. 155).

[79] Campbell, vol. ii. p. 58; Chambers, p. 70.

[80] Cromek, p. 246.

[81] Bartsch, vol. i. p. 42; Sikes, p. 59, quoting from the "Cambrian

Quarterly," vol. ii. p. 86; "Y Cymmrodor," vol. vi. p. 209; Arnason's

"Icelandic Legends," cited in Kennedy, p. 89; Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 174,

quoting Thiele, "Danmark's Folkesagn samlede." See also Keightley, p.

125.

[82] Fleury, p. 60; "Revue des Trad. Pop." vol. iii. p. 162.

[83] Cf. _Böhmen-Gold_, Bartsch, vol. i. p. 22; _Böhmegold_, ibid. p.

47; _Böhmer Gold_, ibid. pp. 65, 79, and presumably p. 89; _Böhma gold_,

Kuhn und Schwartz, p. 30; _Boehman gold_, ibid. p. 31; _böm un gold_

(timber and gold), ibid. p. 105; _Boem un holt_ (timber and wood), Jahn,

p. 90; _Bernholt in den Wolt_ (firewood in the forest), and _Bremer

Wold_, Müllenhoff, cited Grimm, "Tales," vol. i. p. 388. These

variations while preserving a similar sound are suspicious.

[84] Grimm, "Tales," vol. i. pp. 163, 388; Schleicher, p. 91; Fleury, p.

60; Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 176; quoting Asbjörnsen, "Huldreeventyr," vol.

ii. p. 165. _Cf._ Sébillot, "Contes Pop." vol. ii. p. 78.

[85] Sikes, pp. 58, 59; Howells, p. 138; "Y Cymmrodor," vol. iv. p. 208,

vol. vi. pp. 172, 204; Keightley, p. 436.

[86] Croker, p. 65; "A Pleasant Treatise of Witches," p. 62, quoted in

Hazlitt, "Fairy Tales," p. 372; Sébillot, "Contes," vol. ii. p. 76;

Carnoy, p. 4; Thorpe, vol. iii. p. 157; Campbell, vol. ii. p. 47; "Revue

des Trad. Pop." vol. iii. p. 162. _Cf._ a Basque tale given by Webster,

where the Devil is tricked into telling his age (Webster, p. 58).

[87] Simrock, p. 419.

[88] Jahn, p. 89; Schleicher, p. 91.

[89] "Choice Notes," p. 27; (this seems to have been a common

prescription in Wales: see "Y Cymmrodor," vol. vi, pp. 175, 178; and in

the Western Highlands: see Campbell, vol. ii. p. 64.) Brand, vol. ii. p.

335, note; (this seems also to be the case in some parts of Ireland,

Lady Wilde, vol. i. p. 70.) Thorpe, vol. iii. p. 157; Kennedy, p. 94;

"Irish Folk Lore," p. 45.

[90] _Beaten_--Lay of Marie de France, quoted Keightley, p. 436;

Costello, "Pilgrimage to Auvergne," vol. ii. p. 294, quoted Keightley,

p. 471; Fleury, p. 62, citing Bosquet, "Normandie Romanesque"; Howells,

p. 139; Aubrey, "Remains," p. 30; Jahn, pp. 98, 101; Kuhn und Schwartz,

p. 29; Croker, p. 81. _Starved, beaten, &c._--Croker, p. 77. _Threatened

to be killed_--Sébillot, "Trad. et Super." vol. i. p. 118; "Contes,"

vol. i. p. 28, vol. ii. p. 76; Carnoy, p. 4.

[91] Grohmann, p. 135; Wratislaw, p. 161; Schleicher, p. 92.

[92] "Y Brython," vol. ii. p. 20; Kennedy, p. 90; Thorpe, vol. ii. p.

174; Napier, p. 40; Lady Wilde, vol. i. pp. 72, 171; Keightley, p. 393;

"Revue des Trad. Pop." vol. iii. p. 162; Campbell, vol. ii. pp. 47, 61;

Croker, p. 65; Chambers, p. 70; "F. L. Journal," vol. i. p. 56; Gregor,

pp. 8, 9; Cromek, p. 246.

[93] "Daily Telegraph," 19 May 1884; Gregor, p. 61; Lady Wilde, vol. i.

pp. 38, 173; "Y Cymmrodor," vol. vi. p. 209, vol. v. p. 72.

[94] "Cambrian Quarterly," vol. ii. p. 86, quoted, Sikes, p. 59; "Y

Cymmrodor," vol. iv. p. 208, vol. vi. pp. 172, 203. Mr. Sikes refers to

a case in which the child was bathed in a solution of foxglove as having

actually occurred in Carnarvonshire in 1857, but he gives no authority.

[95] Quoted in Southey, _loc. cit._ Müllenhoff relates a similar tale,

see Thorpe, vol. iii. p. 46; also Grohmann, p. 126; Kuhn und Schwartz,

p. 30. Bowker, p. 73, relates a story embodying a similar episode, but

apparently connected with Wild Hunt legends. See his note, ibid. p. 251.

[96] Hunt, p. 91; "F. L. Journal," vol. vi. p. 182.

[97] "Y Cymmrodor," vol. vi. p. 181.

[98] Mrs. Bray, vol. i. p. 167; Kuhn, p. 196; Grimm, "Teut. Myth." p.

468, note; "Irish F. L." p. 45; Napier, p. 42.

[99] Jahn, p. 52; Campbell, vol. ii. p. 47; Lady Wilde, vol. i. p. 119.

[100] "F. L. Journal," vol. ii. p. 91, quoting the "Irish Fireside."

[101] Gregor, p. 62; Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 139, quoting Thiele; vol. iii.

p. 41, quoting Müllenhoff; Campbell, vol. ii. p. 67; Cromek, p. 244.

[102] Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 133, quoting Thiele; Keightley, p. 391,

quoting Stewart, "The Popular Superstitions of the Highlanders."

[103] Napier, p. 41; Lord A. Campbell, "Waifs and Strays," p. 71;

"Border Minstrelsy," vol. ii. p. 173.