Irish Faerie Folk of Yore and Yesterday: The Changeling

Lily Fairy 1888: Artist – Luis Ricardo Falero (1851–1896)

Admit it. We’ve all had the misfortune of meeting a child who just didn’t seem quite right. Willful and mischievous? Ill-behaved and undisciplined? A “bad seed” perhaps? Of course, we smile politely and pretend we don’t notice…but we keep an eye on them while we’re there, nevertheless. It could all be simply the fact that the child is very, very spoiled…

Or…could the little brat actually be a Changeling?

Up till now in this series, we’ve floated along toward Halloween on a wind of other-worldly, fairytale, nightmarish creatures. Vampires and headless horsemen and soul-stealing ravens. Terrifying as they may be, we’d certainly be able to identify them on sight. But what about something a little closer to home? Something a little harder to see coming…until it’s too late? In fact, you could have one in your midst right now… and you wouldn’t even know.

Changelings are said to be Faerie creatures left in the place of healthy human babies. For as many countless tales as there are about all myth and manner of Faerie, you wouldn’t think that procreation would be difficult for the “Fair Folk.” They seem to be under every rock and around every corner. Apparently, though, Faerie births can be quite seldom, and often precarious. The result of an “unsuccessful” Fae birth is a misshapen, stunted creature, destined to be completely shunned by the Faerie realm…thus necessitating the ol’ “bait and switch” pulled-over on us oblivious humans.

In some cases, there is not even a sickly Fae child to exchange as a Changeling. Left instead in the place of a bouncing baby boy or girl is a bundle of sticks, or a log, or other inanimate object, bewitched to look like the missing infant. In a few days or weeks, the “baby” will appear to become ill and die, leaving the human parents broken-hearted (and none-the-wiser as to the pilfering by the Faeries). 

Ah, but human babies were not the only target of the Fae. They were even known to take full-grown adults, leaving exact-duplicate Changelings in their place.

Study for The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania c 1849: Artist – Joseph Noel Paton (1821–1901)

While a baby could be coveted for its innocence and beauty, why would the Fae want a full-grown human? Some folklorists maintain that it is for inter-species breeding; the occasional introduction of attractive “new blood” is thought to strengthen the Fae race as a whole. Other theories take the phrase “new blood” quite literally: the Fae would feed off the stolen human thinking that the blood and flesh of the beautiful would be sweeter.  And still others believe that the handsome adults who were taken became slaves to the Fae inside their “Faerie mounds” (mounds of earth called “Sithens” where the magical creatures could live, eternally, unseen by human eyes). It would appear that vitality and beauty, no matter what the age of the victim, are the common denominators for the entrance of Changelings, and are enough to draw the avarice of the Faeries.

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