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Changeling |
A Changeling is a being in West European folklore and folk religion, typically described as the offspring of a fairy, troll, elf or other legendary creature that has been secretly left in the place of a human child. The apparent changeling could also be a stock, an enchanted piece of wood that would soon appear to grow sick and die.
A human child might be taken due to many factors: to act as a servant, the love of a human child, or malice.1 Most often it was thought that fairies exchanged the children. The Changelings feed on the mothers and in result they leave odd bruises in the back of their necks. The changeling could feed on the mother for weeks until they drain her dry. Anything or anyone that gets in the way of the changelings food source is violently killed. Simple charms, such as an inverted coat, were thought to ward them off. The best way to get rid of a changeling is to make them laugh. The parents of a changeling child will have no choice but to take back their baby and leave the real baby or child behind.
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Changelings would be identified by voracious appetite, malicious temper, difficulty in movement, and other unpleasant traits.2 Medieval chronicles recorded instances of this, which is one of the oldest known pieces of folklore about fairies.3 Changelings usually can be identified by a greenish tint to their skin. Changelings also dislike shoes so they will probably be walking around with no shoes. They are very wise and possess an intelligent vocabulary. Their hair is also a way to identify one as the hair is usually very messy no matter how many times you brush, and it will grow very fast. It is saidwho? that if you cut a changeling's hair, it will grow back by the next morning. Their eyes and hair are usually earth colors such as green and brown.citation needed
According to some legends, it is possible to detect changelings as they are much wiser than human children. When changelings are detected in time, their parents have to take them back. In one tale of the Brothers Grimm, there's an account of how a woman, who suspected that her child had been exchanged, started to brew beer in the hull of an acorn. The changeling uttered: "now I am as old as an oak in the woods but I have never seen beer being brewed in an acorn", then disappeared.1
Changelings are picky eaters unless offered something they like. They have pointed ears. They also grow up slower than other humans.citation needed
Some people believed that trolls would take unbaptized children. Once the child is baptized and therefore part of the Church, the trolls can't take them. One belief is that trolls thought that being raised by humans was something very classy, and that they therefore wanted to give their own children a human upbringing.
Beauty in human children and young women, particularly blond hair, attracted the fairies.4
In Scottish folklore, the children might be replacements for fairy children in the tithe to Hell;5 this is best known from the ballad of Tam Lin.6
Some folklorists believe that fairies were memories of inhabitants of various regions in Europe who had been driven into hiding by invaders. They held that changelings had actually occurred; the hiding people would exchange their own sickly children for the healthy children of the invaders.7
Note: Some changelings might forget they are not human and proceed to live a human life. Changelings which do not forget, however, may later return to their fairy family, possibly leaving the human family without warning. As for the human child that was taken, he or she may stay with the fairy family forever.
Since most beings from Scandinavian folklore are said to be afraid of steel, Scandinavian parents often placed a steel item such as a pair of scissors or a knife on top of an unbaptized infant's cradle. It was believed that if a human child was taken in spite of such measures, the parents could force the return of the child by treating the changeling cruelly, using methods such as whipping or even inserting it in a heated oven. In at least one case, a woman was taken to court for having killed her child in an oven.8
In one Swedish changeling tale9, the human mother is advised to brutalize the changeling so that the trolls will return her son, but she refuses, unable to mistreat an innocent child despite knowing its nature. When her husband demands she abandons the changeling, she refuses, and he leaves her - whereupon he meets their son in the forest, wandering free. The son explains that since his mother had never been cruel to the changeling, so the troll mother had never been cruel to him, and when she sacrificed what was dearest to her, her husband, they had realized they had no power over her and released him.
In another Swedish fairy tale10 (which is depicted by the image), a princess is kidnapped by trolls and replaced with their own offspring against the wishes of the troll mother. The changelings grow up with their new parents, but both find it hard to adapt: the human girl is disgusted by her future bridegroom, a troll prince, whereas the troll girl is bored by her life and by her dull human future groom. Upset with the conditions of their lives, they both go astray in the forest, passing each other without noticing it. The princess comes to the castle whereupon the queen immediately recognizes her, and the troll girl finds a troll woman who is cursing loudly as she works. The troll girl bursts out that the troll woman is much more fun than any other person she has ever seen, and her mother happily sees that her true daughter has returned. Both the human girl and the troll girl marry happily the very same day.
In Wales the changeling child (plentyn newid) initially resembles the human it substitutes, but gradually grows uglier in appearance and behaviour: ill-featured, malformed, ill-tempered, given to screaming and biting. It may be of less than usual intelligence, but again is identified by its more than childlike wisdom and cunning.
The common means employed to identify a changeling is to cook a family meal in an eggshell. The child will exclaim, "I have seen the acorn before the oak, but I never saw the likes of this," and vanish, only to be replaced by the original human child. Alternatively, or following this identification, it is supposedly necessary to mistreat the child by placing it in a hot oven, by holding it in a shovel over a hot fire, or by bathing it in a solution of foxglove. 11
In Ireland, looking at a baby with envy -- "over looking the baby" -- was dangerous, as it endangered the baby, who was then in the fairies' power.12 So too was admiring or envying a woman or man dangerous, unless the person added a blessing; the able-bodied and beautiful were in particular danger. Women were especially in danger in liminal states: being a new bride, or a new mother.13
Putting a changeling in a fire would cause it to jump up the chimney and return the human child, but at least one tale recounts a mother with a changeling finding that a fairy woman came to her home with the human child, saying the other fairies had done the exchange, and she wanted her own baby.12 The tale of surprising a changeling into speech -- by brewing eggshells -- is also told in Ireland, as in Wales.14
Child ballad 40, The Queen of Elfan's Nourice, depicts the abduction of a new mother, drawing on the folklore of the changelings. Although it is fragmentary, it contains the mother's grief and the Queen of Elfland's promise to return her to her own child if she will nurse the queen's child until it can walk.15.
The Men-an-Tol stones in kernow / Cornwall are supposed to have a fairy or pixy guardian who can make miraculous cures. In one case a Changeling baby was put through the stone in order for the mother to get the real child back. Evil pixies had changed her child and the ancient stones were able to reverse their evil spell.16
In Asturias (North Spain) there is a legend about the Xana, a sort of nymph who used to live near rivers, fountains and lakes, sometimes helping travelers on their journeys. The Xanas were conceived as little female fairies with supernatural beauty. They could deliver babies, "xaninos," that were sometimes swapped with human babies in order to be baptized. The legend says that in order to distinguish a "xanino" from a human baby, some pots and egg shells should be put close to the fireplace; a "xanino" would say: "I was born one hundred years ago, and since then I have not seen so many egg shells near the fire!".
The ritual impurity17 of the parturient mother and her child exposed them, according to traditional Maltese belief, to unusual danger especially during the first few days after birth. A changeling child (called mibdul, 'changed') was taken to St Julian's Bay18, where a statue of the saint stands, and given a sand-bath. A cordial was also administered, in attempts to return the child.19
Real children were sometimes taken to be changelings by the superstitious, and therefore abused or murdered.
Two 19th century cases reflected the belief in changelings. In 1826, Anne Roche bathed Michael Leahy, a four-year-old boy unable to speak or stand, three times in the Flesk; he drowned the third time. She swore that she was merely attempting to drive the fairy out of him, and the jury acquitted her of murder.20 In the 1890s in Ireland, Bridget Cleary was killed by several people, including her husband and cousins, after a short bout of illness (probably pneumonia). Local storyteller Jack Dunne accused Bridget of being a fairy changeling. It is debatable whether her husband, Michael, actually believed her to be a fairy - many believe he concocted a 'fairy defence' after he murdered his wife in a fit of rage. The killers were convicted of manslaughter rather than murder, as even after the death they claimed that they were convinced they had killed a changeling, not Bridget Cleary.21.
The ogbanje (pronounced similar to "oh-BWAN-jeh") is a term meaning "child who comes and goes" among the Igbo people of eastern Nigeria. When a woman would have numerous children either stillborn or die early in infancy, the traditional belief was that it was a malicious spirit that was being reincarnated over and over again to torment the afflicted mother. One of the most commonly-proscribed methods for ridding one's self of an ogbanje was to find its iyi-uwa, a buried object that ties the evil spirit to the mortal world, and destroy it.
Many scholars now believe that ogbanje stories were attempting to explain children with sickle-cell disease, which is endemic to West Africa and afflicts around one-quarter of the population. Even today, and especially in areas of Africa lacking medical resources, infant death is common for children born with severe sickle-cell disease.
The similarity between the European changeling and the Igbo ogbanje is striking enough that Igbos themselves often translate the word into English as "changeling."
Aswangs, a kind of ghoul from the Philippines, are also sometimes said to leave behind duplicates of their victims made of plant matter. Like the stocks of European fairy folklore, the Aswang's wood duplicates soon appear to sicken and die.
The reality behind many changeling legends was often the birth of deformed or retarded children. Among the diseases with symptoms that match the description of changelings in various legends are spina bifida, cystic fibrosis, PKU, progeria,Down syndrome, homocystinuria, Williams syndrome, Hurler syndrome, Hunter syndrome, and cerebral palsy. The greater proneness of boys to birth defect correlates to the belief that boy babies were more likely to be taken.22
As noted, it has been hypothesized that the changeling legend may have developed, or at least been used, to explain the peculiarities of children who did not develop normally, probably including all sorts of developmental delays and abnormalities. In particular, it has been suggested that children with autism would be likely to be labeled as changelings or elf-children due to their strange, sometimes inexplicable behavior. This has found a place in autistic culture. Some high-functioning autistic adults have come to identify with changelings (or other replacements, such as aliens) for this reason and their own feeling of being in a world where they don’t belong and of practically not being the same species as the "normal" people around them.23 In the book The Stolen Child, Keith Donohue talks about the life of a changeling from the point of view of two boys, one of which was evidently autistic.
Infants diagnosed with Failure to thrive that have no history of neglect also fit the description of changelings. This can be a devastating diagnosis, and it is easy to see how people would have taken comfort in placing the cause outside their influence. The stories of kindness and care being rewarded with the return of the child also fit the nursing needed to restore an infant's health.
In Episode 12, Season 3 of So Weird, titled "Changeling", Annie and the boys are stuck babysitting a changeling.
In Episode 2, Season 3 of Supernatural, titled "The Kids Are Alright", Sam and Dean discover that many of the neighborhood children are actually changelings, following several mysterious deaths in the neighborhood. In this episode the changelings are controlled by a mother changeling who feeds on the kidnapped children.
The trading card game Magic: The Gathering has a block named Lorwyn which is based heavily on European folklore, and features changelings. In a nod to their shapeshifting abilities their cards can become any creature type, and include a card called Crib Swap, referring to how they are switched with children.
Multiple roleplaying games are also set in an environment featuring changelings, such as White Wolf's popular Changeling: The Dreaming and the recent Changeling: The Lost.
A changeling appeared in the Hellboy story, "The Corpse." A changeling also appeared in the first Courtney Crumrin mini-series.
In the 2007 film, Pan's Labyrinth, the young heroine of the story is implied to be a changeling. Whether she is indeed magical or simply a child with an active imagination is left to interpretation of the viewer, but many "real world" elements of the story are only explainable through magic.
In Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale by Holly Black, the protagonist is revealed to be a faerie changeling. In a later book, Kay returns her human counterpart to her mother.
Jim Morrison wrote and performed the song "The Changeling" that was released as the first track on the final album LA Woman prior to his death.
Jim Butcher's series "The Dresden Files" contains characters called changelings who are children of humans and fairies or humans and trolls. The characters must choose which of their parents to take after, and seem more likely to lead supernatural lives due to their awareness of the magical world.
The changeling theme has frequently appeared in literature, especially in the genres of fairy tale and fantasy. Notable 20th and 21st century appearances of changelings in literature include the following:
In William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Titania and Oberon are fighting over the possession of a changeling boy, and because of their argument, nature is in upheaval, and all the subsequent action of the plot ensues.
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