Changeling folklore

It’s a lot more complex than simply fairies swapping babies, says Jeremy Harte

The Medieval Changeling Health, Childcare and the Family Unit Rose A Sawyer DS Brewer 2023 Hb, 253pp, £80, ISBN 9781843846512 Once there were no changelings. Mothers slept without fear of an elfish look-alike replacing their little ones. But the belief existed by the 11th century, and was widespread in the 19th. What happened? There is a history of the fear that your child might be taken; another of the rituals for dealing with actual children thought to be exchanged; and yet another of the stories which may endorse the fear and the ritual, or may just be entertainment. These three things are not all the same. Hardly any mediæval texts about changelings survive. The educated never accepted them as a plausible explanation for childhood deformity–unlike witchcraft, where scholars eventually put…

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