Episode 7 - Changelings

For the first time in Through the Veil, I feel the content presented requires some prefacing.

To best offer entertainment to you all, it is the right thing to do to attach a content warning to this episode.

This episode deals with subjects including child abuse, kidnapping, and the death of children in a historical context.

If these subjects will be harmful or triggering for you, I encourage you not to listen to this episode, and to join me again next time.

It takes some time, to notice that your child is different.

Different from other children, certainly, but also different than they once were.

As time goes on, you begin to suspect something. To fear something.

This is not your child after all.

Your child has been taken by those of the otherworld.

This is a changeling.

The Changeling is a figure present in folklore across Europe, and aspects of the story can be found farther afield.

Each culture had their own way of identifying the presence of a Changeling.

Each had their own explanation of why the child would be taken, or what would replace it.

Some suggest fairies, or other spirits, would take children to use as servants, or perhaps simply to get revenge on a human that had earned their ire.

Others seem to say that it was less about the child being taken, and more about a fairy being given to human parents to live peacefully and be doted upon. Some stories claim that trolls and fairies and the like believed that being raised by humans was more respectable, and so they wanted to give their own children a human upbringing.

These stories are all well and good. But in a historical context, these stories grow darker.

Some changeling stories have a happy ending, with a family reunited and a fairy sent back to the Otherworld. But not most.

No, most records about changelings end with death. It was not uncommon for families to resort to a terrible and harsh solution when they suspected the presence of a changeling… death.

Changeling were often blamed for deaths, particularly of infants and young children, but also as excuses for the death of young women. Over the years, these creatures have come to represent a level of panic and superstition that could, at one time, justify murder.

What do we do when the familiar becomes the alien?

When that which is most dear is taken from us?

One story, rather, one collection of stories, explores these questions in a profound way. And maybe the prevalence of this question in our minds, and its importance to us as people explains why this story is present in the folk lore of many countries in Europe and beyond.

Today, we tell a disturbing tale. We speak to one of the darkest habits of fairies or spirits. A practice that spawned stories that send shivers down my spine. Today, we talk about Changelings.

I am Andrew Eagle. And if you desire to see the darkest side of Fairy Tales, follow me as I go Through the Veil.

For years, your child was just as any other their age.

But recently, something has changed. They have changed. The other children were growing, healthy and happy, wandering the village and exploring.

But your child, they are sickly. Always sickly. And they do not grow. Not like the other children.

However, they are bright, so smart, far beyond their young age in many ways.

At least they had their appetite. Too much of one really… They were ravenous, always hungry.

But it never helped them grow, helped them recover from whatever ailed them.

It was over the course of the weeks that followed that you begin to suspect something.

You would catch glimpses of motion out of the corner of your eye. Were they dancing? No, it couldn’t be.

But you could swear that you’ve seen them jump, high for their height, too high…

Never clearly, and you usually explain it away, but its been too much for too long.

You know the stories as well as anyone, your child has been taken.

And this, this thing masquerading as your child, is not even human.

It is a changeling.

The depiction of changelings across folklore vary significantly across Europe and beyond. Some are obvious, and the change is recognized immediately, as the changelings are described with long beards and sharp teeth.

Others were nearly identical to the children they replaced, and could escape detection for weeks, or even months. They were often only caught out if their unwitting human parent caught them dancing or playing an instrument - behaviors they quite enjoyed.

Some changeling myths rely on traditional fairy weaknesses to identify them. Things like raw iron, or certain herbs, could be used to reveal the creatures.

In Germany, changelings could be confused into revealing themselves by brewing or cooking in an eggshell. Such behaviors would force the changeling to speak, and reveal its true nature.

Alternatively, the changeling could be placed in an oven. The heat would grow and they would eventually be overcome. In exchange for being freed, they would often return the child.

In Irish folk lore, looking at a child or young person with envy was dangerous. It could attract the attention of fairies, who would jealously steal the person away and replace them with a changeling.

Irish Changelings could be discovered by placing them in a fire, which would cause them to leap out the chimney and return the human child; by brewing a tea of egg shells, or even saying a prayer over them and blessing them.

 In one particularly optimistic changeling story, an Irish mother awoke in the middle of the night to a fairy woman. The fairy was holding the woman’s child and claimed that her own fairy child had been swapped by others from the otherworld.

She had come to undo the exchange, and peacefully left after the trade was done.

To retrieve your child, to save them, you will have to first trick the changeling that has replaced them.

Getting rid of the changeling now that you know what it is would be easy.

But just getting rid of it would not bring your child back.

You know the old stories, but you will have to move carefully. If the changeling suspects that you know, it may flee before you can learn how to get your true child back.

You start by collecting egg shells. When you make breakfast you begin to collect them, shattered into small pieces, and collected in a small jar.

You keep them hidden away, only accessing the stockpile when you are sure the creature is not around.

Then, when you’ve collected enough, you bring a pot of water to the fireplace, somewhere the creature can see, and you wait patiently while it boils.

You keep the jar of egg shells tucked inside your coat, but then, as the water boils, you pour the egg shells into the water.

In shock, the changeling calls out, “I have seen the acorn before the oak, but I never saw the likes of this!”

You spin around and exclaim, you’ve caught them in their trick.

The creature immediately claps its hand over its mouth… It knows it has made a mistake.

You demand it return your child, that it go back to where it is from and that it returns what it stole.

Knowing that it has been outwitted, the changeling creature begrudgingly agrees.

There were a number of methods which could be employed in an effort of preventing your child from being taken.

Which of course was preferred to tricking the changeling. Certainly, it was better to stop the switch before it happened, rather than rectifying it later.

It starts with the basics. You must be certain to lock your doors and windows.

If that is forgotten, the spirits can find a way in.

Barring that, if you forget, and they make their way inside your home, they can still be foiled.

Leaving a pair of iron scissors near the child’s bed, for example. Some stories even suggest placing those scissors in the child’s bed, not just near it. The presence of iron will prevent the fairies from taking the child.

Or a coat turned inside out left to hang where the child sleeps could be used as a charm to ward off such kidnappers.

If a parent did not trust their child’s safety to such simple wards, they could hold all night vigils. Fairy spirits would not be so bold as to take a child who was actively under watch.

Some versions of the story, those penned by Catholic priests writing the folklore and histories of Ireland and Scotland record that once a child had been baptized, they could never be taken or harmed by such spirits again.

The fairy creature leads you into the countryside to the woods, where one of the fairy mounds rests.

The changeling turns to you, your strange guide.

“I will go where you can’t follow. You have outwitted me, and I will return with your child.”

And while you dislike the creature, you know that the wee folk do not lie.

You release the creature and it vanishes beneath the mound.

You begin to worry as dawn approaches. The creature will not show itself in the light of the sun.

But then, with little left of night, the figure of the changeling appears once more, carrying with it a child.

Your child.

They are returned to you, unharmed.

Before you turn to leave, you warn the changeling: Never to return to haunt you or yours or you will do far worse than trick them with egg shells.

They nod, they know they have been beaten. And they vanish back into the darkness beneath the mound, back to their otherworld.

You return home with the sun, holding your child close.

In some versions of the changeling story, it is not a fairy child that is exchanged.

Instead, it is an eldery fairy, left to die peacefully in the human world.

While many countries in Europe have folklore attached to changelings, there are variations between them all.

For instance, German changelings are not fairy children.

Instead, several possibilities were presented as possible parents.

The devil for one.

Or one of the many water spirits of German folklore.

One of the less common ideas, but one of my favorites, is that a changeling is a child of a roggenmutter or Rye Mother.

A demonic woman that lives in corn and rye fields and steals human children.

In many cases, it is not a child that is taken, but instead a young woman. Generally in stories, the victim is either a newly wed or new mother.

In Spain, changelings are the children of a xanas, a river or fountain spirit, and they would switch their children, the xaninos with human children.

Outside of Europe, there is one story that has become associated with changelings.

The Igbo people of eastern Nigeria have a story of the ogbanje. A malicious spirit that was said to cause children to die either during childbirth or shortly thereafter.

The similarities are so striking between European changeling lore and the Igbo ogbanje that the Igbo translate the word ogbanje to changeling in English.

There are many proposals from scholars attempting to explain the prevalence of changeling stories.

Some scholars believe that the stories come from attempts to explain behavior in children that now are associated to any number of conditions that can cause developmental struggles.

There are a number of diseases and disabilities that have symptoms which mirror descriptions of changelings.

Another explanation offered is that changeling stories are something like a scar left-over from people who had been driven into hiding by invaders over time.

It is suggested that these hidden groups would exchange their own sickly children with the healthy children of the invaders, hoping that the swap would not be noticed, and the invaders would help and care for the sick child.

Two accounts in particular are cited in historical records, both in the nineteenth century.

In 1826, Anne Roche took a boy, Michael Leahy to bathe in the river Flesk.

The boy, at four years old, was unable to speak or stand, and Anne believed he was a changeling.

During the bathing, Michael drowned.

Anne was arrested and went to trial. She swore in her defense that she was attempting to drive the fairy out of him. She swore that he was a changeling.

And in the end, the jury acquitted her of murder.

The second account occurred in 1895. In that year, Bridget Cleary fell briefly ill, What she suffered was probably pneumonia. However, Jack Dunne, a local storyteller accused her of being a changeling. He claimed the affliction could only be one thing. And Jack insisted she was possessed of the fairy world.

The story prompted her family, including her own husband and cousins, to murder her. The killers pled not guilty during their trial. They believed they had killed a changeling, not truly Bridget at all. In the end, the court found them guilty. But not of murder. Instead, they were convicted of manslaughter.

Changelings, whether they were blamed on fairies or the devil, or anything else, demonstrate some of the darkest folklore of many regions.

Even the most pleasant of changeling stories involve someone, usually a child, being stolen away from their home and family.       

There is not much worse to be imagined for a parent than losing their child.

And to make it worse, there is the context and the records of these stories in history. Used to justify and explain horrible acts against young women and children alike.

They aren’t always malicious, and some accounts end happily, but there is something cruel in the very nature of these stories. Playing on fears that are so deep as to be instinctual.

I hope that you have enjoyed this episode of Through the Veil.

If you found your time well spent, I encourage you to subscribe to hear new episodes weekly wherever you choose to listen as we continue our exploration of folklore, and stories of magic.

If you are enjoying the show, and you have topics you would like to hear covered: Feel free to email me at throughtheveilpodcast@gmail.com or reach out on Twitter. You can find me @ThroughVeil

And as always, thank you, for listening.