Protect me from the fairies wild, Or exchange thee for a stolen child ...
Tales of changelings have run throughout European folklore for centuries; people believed that when a child was ‘different’, it was because the real child had been taken and replaced with a fairy known as a changeling. Changelings vary widely across different cultures and time periods, so there isn't a single definitive description or set of characteristics associated with them. The general concept of changelings came from attempts to explain differences in behaviour or development, particularly in infants and young children. Changelings were believed to exhibit behaviour that set them apart from human children. They could be unusually quiet, displaying an eerie calmness or detachment and some stories suggest that changelings were difficult to soothe or comfort. Changelings didn’t grow or develop in the same way as human children; sometimes, they exhibited stunted growth or struggled to reach developmental milestones.
Three reasons were usually given to explain a changeling: for a fairy to receive the love of a human, so the human can become a slave to the faeries, and simply for malicious reasons. Some parents, upon receiving a ‘changeling,’ made it their mission to continue to love the fairy child and treat it as they would their own. There was a glimmer of hope that, if treated well, the faeries would eventually return the human child.
However, not all of them were so lucky.
It was 1826 and Michael Leahy was living in Ireland with his family. He was unable to stand unaided, let alone walk, and was nonverbal. At the age of four, this was causing some concerns for his parents about his development. They approached his grandmother, Ann Roche and asked for her advice. Roche was very old-fashioned and, upon inspecting the child, decided that his conditions weren’t medical but were, in fact, the fault of the fae; the child was a changeling. The only way to save the child and rescue him from the fairy would be to wash the fairy away in the river.
Roche, her friend Mary Clifford and an unknown third person, spent three days in a row washing Michael in the freezing waters of the river Flesk in the dawn light. This did nothing to ‘cure’ him, and Roche believed he needed a more efficient cure. Ignoring the protests of Mary, Roche held the terrified child under the waters until he finally stopped struggling and his body went limp. The fairy had gone. But so had Michael. Mary turned to Roche and asked, ‘How can you ever hope to see God now?’.
No one was ever punished for his murder.
Bridget Cleary lived with her husband, Michael, in County Tipperary, Ireland. In March 1895, Bridget had been delivering eggs and became ill. The area she had delivered to was known to the locals as the location of a fairy ring; an area created by dancing faeries. A doctor was called to Bridget, and he diagnosed bronchitis. He deemed her so ill that a priest was summoned to perform the last rites.
Michael, instead of soothing his sick wife, started accusing her of being a changeling and a witch. This belief was cemented when a local storyteller who believed in the old ways told him, ‘It is not your wife in there’. Michael went to a local fairy doctor, Dennis Ganey, who provided him with a cure: a foul, bitter mixture of milk and herbs.
On the 14th of March, Bridget's aunt Mary visited her sick niece and was horrified by what greeted her. Bridget was being held on the bed by six men, including her own father. Michael was trying to make his wife drink the medicine. Over the previous days, Michael had also thrown urine over her, threatened and burned her with a red-hot poker and forced her to say his name repeatedly.
On the 15th of March, Bridget asked for some milk in the afternoon, a drink that fairy folk craved. Yet again, Michael insisted she repeated his name. By the third time, Bridget refused, and Michael lost his temper. He grabbed his wife, stripped her and doused her in oil before setting her on fire. People at the house tried to help her, but Michael held them back. One relative, James Kennedy, shouted, ‘For the love of God, don’t burn your wife!’ and Michael replied, ‘She’s not my wife; she’s an old deceiver sent in place of my wife’.
Bridget died in agony and was unceremoniously buried in a shallow grave not far from her home.
Michael spent three nights waiting for ‘his’ Bridget to return to himself. There was a knock on the door, but it wasn’t Bridget; it was the police.
In July 1895, Michael was found guilty of manslaughter and served 15 years in prison.
Sadly, these weren’t the only cases of people dying because of fairy folklore.
Looking at these cases through modern eyes it’s more than disturbing when you realise the reality of these changelings. These children who had been branded ‘away with the faeries’ had physical disabilities, developmental issues, and conditions such as autism and cerebral palsy. These children never stood a chance against the firm belief in legend, the fear of the unknown and the gossip of others.
Thanks for reading; take care of yourselves, and I will see you next time.
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“Fairy-men and women all,
List! – it is your baby’s call;
For on the dung-hill’s top he lies,
Beneath the wide, inclement skies,
Then come with coach and sumptuous train,
And take him to your mote again.
For if ye stay till cocks shall crow,
You’ll find him like a thing of snow, –
A pallid limp, a child of scorn,
A monstrous brat of fairies born.
But ere you bear the boy away,
Restore the child you took instead;
When, like a thief, the other day,
You robbed my infant’s cradle bed,
But, give me back my only son,
And I’ll forgive the harm you done;
And nightly, for your gamboling crew,
I’ll sweep the hearth and kitchen too;
And leave you free your tricks to play,
Whene’er you choose to pass this way.
Then, like good people, do incline
To take your child and give back mine.”
A prayer translated into English and recorded Rev. John O’Hanlon (1870).
The Changeling.
A mother once had her child stolen from her by the elves. They took it out of the cradle and placed in its stead a changeling with a large head and staring eyes, that would do nothing but eat and drink. In her distress, she went to one of her neighbours and asked her advice. The neighbour told her to carry the changeling into the kitchen and seat it on the hearth, then to light a fire and boil some water in two egg-shells. That, she said, would make the changeling laugh, and if he once laughed, it would be all over with him. The mother went back and followed out all these directions. As she put the egg-shells with water in them on the fire, the little gnome-child said—
"I am old as the woods,
But from ages of yore,
I never saw shells
Used for boiling before."
and with that he began to laugh. While he was laughing a company of elves came crowding into the kitchen, bringing with them the woman's own child, which they laid down on the hearth. Then they took up the changeling and disappeared with him.
The Brothers Grimm
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