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Changelings
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Featured November 23 , 2007
Changelings
A woman sets her baby down for a nap while she goes off to tend the fields, not far away. When she returns, she finds her sweet child has turned into a screaming monster.
Another mother wakes up to find her beautiful infant has grown a thick head and ugly, staring eyes. A healthy baby begins wasting away and in a week is no more than a skeleton but with an evil and insatiable greed for its mother's milk. Nightmare of nightmares! Your wonderful child has been coveted by the fairies, stolen, and they've put their own rejected spawn in its place. The cure for this varies, and it may or may not be effective. Sometimes the cure is simply to utter a blessing that banishes the changeling. Sometimes the child must be beaten with a switch. Sometimes it is left alone overnight, often in a sacred place such as near a holy well - or in a more unpleasant place such as on top of a dung hill. Sometimes the cure is even more cruel, such as being thrown into a fire or boiled alive. For some reason, eggshells often have a part in the cure. If the child laughs, it is proof that the real one has been restored. There are stories about changelings who were actually accepted into families, usually when no cure worked for them. Typically they grew into adult form, but were always strange in some way, either severely retarded, deformed, or with strange idiosyncracies or otherworldly talents, usually for playing music. Almost always, however, something happens and the grown-up changeling suddenly disappears when a certain name is called or when mention is made of a fairy mound. They fly up the chimney, run off at superhuman speed, or simply vanish in a fluttering of wings. According to the legends, some of which are still held in rural areas of the Celtic lands today, there are precautions that can be taken against a child being swapped for a changeling. Christian baptism, of course, is one. Keeping a toad stone or some other amulet near the baby is another preventation. A knife hung over the cradle with its blade near the child's face kept the fairies away in some parts of old England. In Ireland, male children would be dressed as girls, since boys were thought to be more attractive to the fairies. Calling the child by an unflattering nickname, like Stinky or Bad Boy, supposedly makes it unattractive to would-be fairy kidnappers. And it is never wise to praise a child aloud with saying "God bless him" afterwards, in case the praise has drawn unwanted attention. Sources: W. Y. Evans-Wentz, The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries John Rhys, Celtic Folklore Joseph Jacobs, Celtic Fairy Tales E. Estyn Evans, Irish Folkways |
Courtyard
~ Table of Contents ~
Ynys Môn ( Isle of Anglesey)
Cill Dara Caer Gai Winter Solstice - Rebirth of the Sun Temair Luachra Brú na Bóinne LUGHNASADH: FEAST OF FIRST FRUITS Maes Howe Reflections on Cnoc Áine Samhain: The Last Feast of Summer Clonycavan Man Lough Derg In Search of the Real Myrddin, Mad Prophet and Poet Myth and Celtic Culture by Draoi-man Brigantes (David Drew) |
