CHAPTER X.
CHANGELINGS.
KIDNAPPING was a favorite pastime with our small friends, and a greatmany reasons concurred to make it a necessary and thriving trade. We aretold that both the Tylwyth Teg and the Korrigans had a fear that theirfrail race was dying out, and sought to steal hearty young children, andleave the wee, bright, sickly "changeling," or ex-changeling, in itsplace. That sounds like a quibble; for we know that fairies were freefrom the shadow of death, and could not possibly dread any lessening oftheir numbers from the old, old cause. Yet we saw that the air-elvesheld pitched battles, and murdered one another like gallant soldiers,from the world's beginning; and again comes a straggling little proof tomake us suspect that they had not quite the immortality they boasted.However, we pass it by, sure at least that the philosopher who firstobserved the merry goblins to be at bottom wavering and disconsolate,recognized an instance of it in this pathetic eagerness to adopt babiesnot their own. Fairy-folk were believed, in general, to have power overnone but unbaptized children.
A tradition older and wider than the Tylwyth Teg's runs that a yearlytribute was due from Fairyland to the prince of the infernal regions, aspoor King AEgeus had once to pay Minos of Crete with the seven fair boysand girls; and that, for the sake of sparing their own dear ones, thelittle beings, in their fantastic dress, flew east and west on ananxious hunt for human children, who might be captured and deliveredover to bondage instead. And they crept cautiously to many a cradle, andhaving secured the sleeping innocent, "plucked the nodding nurse by thenose," as Ben Jonson said, and vanished with a scream of triumphantlaughter. Welsh fairies have been caught in the very act of the theft,and a pretty fight they made, every time, to keep their booty; but thestrength of a man or a woman, was, of course, too much for them toresist long.
Now, whenever a mother, who, you may count upon it, thought her ownurchin most beautiful of all under the moon, found him growing cross andhomely, in despite of herself, she suddenly awoke to this view of thecase: that the dwindled babe was her babe no longer, but a miserableyoung gosling from Fairyland slipped into its place. A miserable youngforeign gosling it was from that hour, though it had her owngrandfather's special kind of a nose on its unmistakable face.
The discovery always made a great sensation; people came from thesurrounding villages to wonder at the lean, gaping, knowing-eyed smallstranger in the crib, and to propose all sorts of charms which shouldrid the house of his presence, and restore the rightful heir again. Theywere not especially polite to the poor changeling. In Denmark, and inIreland as well, they dandled him on a hot shovel! If he were really achangeling, the fairies, rather than see him singed, were sure toappear in a violent fluster and whisk him away, and at the same minuteto drop its former owner plump into the cradle. And if it were not achangeling, how did those queer by-gone mammas know when to stop thebroiling and baking?
Mr. George Waldron, who in 1726 wrote an entertaining _Description ofthe Isle of Man_, recorded it that he once went to see a baby supposedto be a changeling; that it seemed to be four or five years old, butsmaller than an infant of six months, pale, and silky-haired, and (whatwas unusual) with the fairest face under heaven; that it was not able towalk nor to move a joint, seldom smiled, ate scarcely anything, andnever spoke nor cried; but that if you called it a fairy-elf, it fixedits gaze on you as if it would look you through. If it were left alone,it was overheard laughing and frolicking, and when it was taken upafter, limp as cloth, its hair was found prettily combed, and there weresigns that it had been washed and dressed by its unseen playfellows.
The main point to put the family mind at rest on the matter, was tomake the changeling "own up," force him to do something which no tendermortal in socks and bibs ever was able to do, such as dance, prophesy,or manage a musical instrument. There was an Irish changeling, theyoungest of five sons, who, being teased, snatched a bagpipe from avisitor, and played upon it in the most accomplished and melting manner,sitting up in his wooden chair, his big goggle-eyes fixed on thecompany. And when he knew he was found out, he sprang, bagpipe and all,into the river; which leads one to suspect that he was a sort of strayStroemkarl.
THERE WAS AN IRISH CHANGELING.]
The Welsh fairies had good taste, and admired wholesome and handsomechildren. They stole such often, and left for substitute theplentyn-newid (the change-child) who at first was exactly like theabsent nursling, but soon grew ugly, shrivelled, biting, wailing,cunning and ill-tempered. In the hope of proving whether it were afairy-waif or not, people put the little creature to such hard tests,that sometimes it nearly died of acquaintance with a rod, or an oven, ora well.
"THE ACORN BEFORE THE OAK HAVE I SEEN."]
If the bereaved parent did some very astonishing thing in plain view ofthe wonder-chick, that would generally entrap it into betraying itssecrets. A French changeling was once moved unawares to sing out that itwas nine hundred years old, at least! In Wales, and also in Brittainy(which are sister-countries of one race) the following story is current:A mother whose infant had been spirited away, and who was much perplexedover what she took to be a changeling, was advised to cook a meal forten farm-servants in one egg-shell. When the queer little creature,burning with curiosity, asked her from his high-chair what she wasabout, she could hardly answer, so excited was she to hear him speak. Atthat he cried louder: "A meal for ten, dear mother, in one egg-shell?The acorn before the oak have I seen, and the wilderness before thelawn, but never did I behold anything like that!" and so gave damagingevidence of his age and his unlucky wisdom. And the woman replied: "Youhave seen altogether too much, my son, and you shall have a beating!"And thereupon she began to thrash him, until he screeched, and a fairyappeared hurriedly to rescue him, and in the crib lay the round, rosy,real child, who had been missing a long while.
Now the "gentry" of modern Greece had an eye also to clever children;but they almost always brought them back, laden with gifts, lovelier inperson than when they were taken from home. And if they appointed achangeling in the meantime (which they were not very apt to do) it nevershowed its elfin nature until it was quite grown up! unlike the uncannygoblins who were all too ready from the first to give autobiographies onthe slightest hint.
The Drows of the Orkney Islands fancied larger game. They used to stalkin among church congregations and carry off pious deacons anddeaconesses! So wrote one Lucas Jacobson Debes, in 1670.
In a pretty Scotch tale, a sly fairy threatened to steal the "ladbairn," unless the mother could tell the fairy's right name. The latterwas a complete stranger, and the woman was sore worried; and went towalk in the woods to ease her anxious and aching heart, and to thinkover some means of outwitting the enemy of her boy. And presently sheheard a faint voice singing under a leaf:
Little kens the gude dame at hame That Whuppity Stoorie is ma name!
When the smart lady in green came to take the beautiful "lad bairn," themother quietly called her "Whuppity Stoorie!" and off she hurried with acry of fear; like the Austrian dwarf Kruzimuegeli, the "dear EkkeNekkepem" of Friesland, and many another who tried to play the sametrick, and who were always themselves the means of telling mortals thevery names they would conceal.
SHE HEARD A FAINT VOICE SINGING UNDER A LEAF.]
Fairy-folk young and old were coquettish enough about their names, andgreatly preferred they should not be spoken outright. This habit gotthem into many a scrape. The anecdote of "Who hurt you? Myself!" wastold in Spain, Finland, Brittainy, Japan, and a dozen other kingdoms,and seems to be as old as the Odyssey. Do you remember where Ulyssestells the Cyclop that his name is Outis, which means Nobody? and how,after the eye of the wicked Polyphemus has been put out, the comradesof the big blinded fellow ask him who did the deed, and he growls back,very sensibly: "Nobody!" Consider what follows a typical modern versionof the same trick.
"AINSEL."]
A young Scotch child, whom we will call Alan, sits by the fire, when apretty creature the size of a doll, waltzes down the chimney to
thehearth, and begins to frolic. When asked its name it says shrewdly:"Ainsel"; which to the boy sounds like what it really is, "Ownself," andmakes him, when it is his turn to be questioned, as saucy and reticentas he supposes his elfin playfellow to be. So Alan tells the sprite thathis name is "_My_ Ainsel," and gets the better of it. For bye-and-byethey wax very frisky and friendly, and right in the middle of theirsport, when little Alan pokes the fire, and gets a spark by chance onAinsel's foot, and when he roars with pain, and the old fairy-motherappears instantly, crying angrily: "Who has hurt thee? Who has hurtthee?" the elf blurts, of course, "My Ainsel!" and she kicks himunceremoniously up chimney, and bids him stop whimpering, since the burnwas of his own silly doing! Alan, meanwhile, climbs upstairs to bed,rejoicing to escape the vengeance of the fairy-mother, and chuckling inhis sleeve at the funny turn things have taken.