Changeling Tales

Tales of Changelings come up frequently in Celtic folklore. The term “changeling” refers to a human being, usually a child but sometimes an adult, who has been taken by the fairies and replaced by a look-a-like. Technically, the changeling is the look-a-like, while the real person is thought to be held captive by the fairies. This topic is briefly discussed in my article “Ten Reasons Fairies are Scary."

The Changeling by John Bauer, 1913

Changeling stories come up often in folklore.  So, for this edition of the Archivist’s Corner, I have decided to let the folklore speak for itself. Here is a selection of some folkloric accounts of changeling tales from books that are in the public domain. Both books are available for free download on ProjectGutenberg.org. 

Folk Stories Recorded in “The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries”
by W. Y. Evans Wentz

In the Highlands: We went on to see the postmaster, Mr. John MacDougall, and he told us that in his boyhood the country-folk round Tomatin believed thoroughly in fairies. 

He said they thought of them as a race of spirits capable of making themselves visible to mortals, as living in underground places, as taking fine healthy babes and leaving changelings in their place. These changelings would waste away and die in a short time after being left. 

A schoolmaster says:  ‘The belief in changelings is not now generally prevalent; but in olden times a mother used to place a pair of iron tongs over the cradle before leaving the child alone, in order that the fairies should not change the child for a weakly one of their own. 

It was another custom to take a wisp of straw, and, lighting one end of it, make a fiery sign of the cross over a cradle before a babe could be placed in it.” – p58

So firmly did the old people believe in fairies then that they would ridicule a person for not believing. And now quite the reverse state has come about. – p94

Goblin watches the girl from the tree branches. Cover image from from The Princess and the Goblins - by George MacDonald, illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith, 1920

Marian MacLean of Barra says: The Tailor and the Changeling.—‘There was a young wife of a young man who lived in the township of Allasdale, and the pair had just had their first child. One day the mother left her baby in its cradle to go out and do some shearing, and when she returned the child was crying in a most unusual fashion. She fed him as usual on porridge and milk, but he wasn’t satisfied with what seemed to her enough for any one of his age, yet every suspicion escaped her attention. 

As it happened, at the time there was a web of home-made cloth in the house waiting for the tailor. The tailor came and began to work up the cloth. As the woman was going out to her customary shearing operation, she warned the tailor if he heard the child continually crying not to pay much attention to it, adding she would attend to it when she came home, for she feared the child would delay him in his work.

‘All went well till about noon, when the tailor observed the child rising up on its elbow and stretching its hand to a sort of shelf above the cradle and taking down from it a yellow chanter [of a bagpipe]. And then the child began to play. 

Immediately after the child began to play the chanter, the house filled with young fairy women all clad in long green robes, who began to dance, and the tailor had to dance with them. 

About two o’clock that same afternoon the women disappeared unknown to the tailor, and the chanter disappeared from the hands of the child also unknown to the tailor; and the child was in the cradle crying as usual.

Dancing fairy by Ida Rentoul Outhwaite

A tailor at work, by Beatrix Potter

‘The wife came home to make the dinner, and observed that the tailor was not so far advanced with his work as he ought to be in that space of time. However, when the fairy women disappeared, the child had enjoined upon the tailor never to tell what he had seen. The tailor promised to be faithful to the child’s injunctions, and so he said nothing to the mother.

‘The second day the wife left for her occupation as usual, and told the tailor to be more attentive to his work than the day before. 

A second time at the same hour of the day the child in the cradle, appearing more like an old man than a child, took the chanter and began to play. The same fairy women filled the house again, and repeated their dance, and the tailor had to join them.

Naturally the tailor was as far behind with his work the second day as the first day, and it was very noticeable to the woman of the house when she returned. She thereupon requested him to tell her what the matter might be. 

Then he said to her, “I urge upon you after going to bed to-night not to fondle that child, because he is not your child, nor is he a child: he is an old fairy man. 

And to-morrow, at dead tide, go down to the shore and wrap him in your plaid and put him upon a rock and begin to pick that shell-fish which is called limpet, and for your life do not leave the shore until such a time as the tide will flow so high that you will scarcely be able to wade in to the main shore.” 

Mother and children by the hearth fire. From The Princess and the Goblins - by George MacDonald, illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith, 1920

The woman complied with the tailor’s advice, and when she had waded to the main shore and stood there looking at the child on the rock, it cried to her, “You had a great need to do what you have done. Otherwise you’d have seen another ending of your turn; but blessing be to you and curses on your adviser.” When the wife arrived home her own natural child was in the cradle.’ – p111-112

A Tale from “British Goblins: Welsh Folk-lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions”
By Wirt Sikes, 1880

‘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.

Handicap or illness might cause a child to be thought to be a changling. Illustration by Jessie Willcox Smith Dickens Children - Ten Drawings, 1912

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. 

The Changeling by Johann Heinrich Füssli, 1780

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.” 

Consulting a conjuror - The Three Witches from MacBeth by John Downman 1824

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 iâr;
Erioed ni welais ferwi bwyd i fedel
Mewn plisgyn wy iâr!

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. - p60-61

Bibliography

Sikes, Wirt. 1880. British Goblins: Welsh Folk-lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions. London: William Clowes and Sons.

Wentz, W. Y. Evans. 1911. The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries. London: Oxford University Press.

A boy with goblins from The Princess and the Goblins - by George MacDonald, illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith, 1920

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My name is Carolyn Emerick, and I write on the history, myth, and folklore of Northwestern Europe. 

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