Fairy Changelings
:
FAIRY CHANGELINGS.
:
Welsh Folk-lore
It was firmly believed, at one time, in Wales, that the Fairies exchanged
their own weakly or deformed offspring for the strong children of
mortals. The child supposed to have been left by the Fairies in the
cradle, or elsewhere, was commonly called a changeling. This faith was
not confined to Wales; it was as common in Ireland, Scotland, and
England, as it was in Wales. Thus, in Spenser's Faery Queen, reference
is
ade in the following words to this popular error:--
And her base Elfin brood there for thee left;
Such, men do chaungelings call, so chaung'd by Faeries theft.
Faery Queen, Bk. I, c. 10.
The same superstition is thus alluded to by Shakespeare:--
A lovely boy, stol'n from an Indian king,
She never had so sweet a changeling.
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act II., Sc. 1.
And again, in another of his plays, the Fairy practice of exchanging
children is mentioned:--
O, that it could be prov'd,
That some night-tripping Fairy had exchanged
In cradle-clothes our children, where they lay,
And call'd mine, Percy, his Plantagenet:
Then would I have his Harry, and he mine.
Henry IV., Pt. 1., Act I, Sc. 1.
In Scotland and other countries the Fairies were credited with stealing
unbaptized infants, and leaving in their stead poor, sickly, noisy, thin,
babies. But to return to Wales, a poet in Y Brython, vol. iii, p. 103,
thus sings:--
Llawer plentyn teg aeth ganddynt,
Pan y cym'rynt helynt hir;
Oddi ar anwyl dda rieni,
I drigfanau difri dir.
Many a lovely child they've taken,
When long and bitter was the pain;
From their parents, loving, dear,
To the Fairies' dread domain.
John Williams, an old man, who lived in the Penrhyn quarry district,
informed the writer that he could reveal strange doings of the Fairies in
his neighbourhood, for often had they changed children with even
well-to-do families, he said, but more he would not say, lest he should
injure those prosperous families.
It was believed that the Fairies were particularly busy in exchanging
children on Nos Wyl Ifan, or St. John's Eve.
There were, however, effectual means for protecting children from their
machinations. The mother's presence, the tongs placed cross-ways on the
cradle, the early baptism of the child, were all preventives. In the
Western Isles of Scotland fire carried round a woman before she was
churched, and round the child until he was christened, daily, night and
morning, preserved both from the evil designs of the Fairies. (Brand,
vol. ii, p. 486.) And it will be shortly shewn that even after an
exchange had been accomplished there were means of forcing the Fairies to
restore the stolen child.
It can well be believed that mothers who had sickly or idiotic babies
would, in uncivilized places, gladly embrace the idea that the child she
nursed was a changeling, and then, naturally enough, she would endeavour
to recover her own again. The plan adopted for this purpose was
extremely dangerous. I will in the following tales show what steps were
taken to reclaim the lost child.
Pennant records how a woman who had a peevish child acted to regain from
the Fairies her own offspring. His words are:--Above this is a
spreading oak of great antiquity, size, and extent of branches; it has
got the name of Fairy Oak. In this very century (the eighteenth) a
poor cottager, who lived near the spot, had a child who grew uncommonly
peevish; the parents attributed this to the Fairies, and imagined that
it was a changeling. They took the child, put it into a cradle, and left
it all night beneath the tree, in hopes that the Tylwyth Teg, or Fairy
Family, or the Fairy folk, would restore their own before the morning.
When morning came, they found the child perfectly quiet, so went away
with it, quite confirmed in their belief.--History of Whiteford, pp.
5, 6.
These people by exposing their infant for a night to the elements ran a
risk of losing it altogether; but they acted in agreement with the
popular opinion, which was that the Fairies had such affection for their
own children that they would not allow them to be in any danger of losing
their life, and that if the elfin child were thus exposed the Fairies
would rescue it, and restore the exchanged child to its parents. The
following tale exhibits another phase of this belief.
The story is to be found in the Cambrian Magazine, vol. ii., pp. 86,
87.