Changeling: children of fairies raised by human women

Changelings: The children of fairies raised by human women.

Unlike other mythological creatures in our Bestiary, Changelings do not make up a particular race; Rather, they come from a habit, a horrible custom, which encompasses different beings from practically all mythologies.

Changeling, as has been said, is not a generic name, but rather defines any supernatural creature that practices the macabre act of substitution.

Changelings are substitutes, impostors; fruits of any mythological creature left to its children to replace a human child.

The reasons for this exchange are many, and often contradict each other.

On the one hand we have the purely malevolent motivation, that is, when a supernatural being needs a human agent to raise its offspring. On the other hand, the Changelings represent a kind of payment or tribute for the kidnapping of a newborn human.

Now, why do fairies or elves need a human child?

In general, these subtractions are not capricious nor do they come from chance. Magical beings are very attentive to the signs of the stars and can, if necessary, appropriate a child when some type of special mark shines on it, for example, the one that marks the birth of a great sorcerer.

At the antipodes of this explanation we find many fairy tales where magical beings feel a special and selfless devotion for the affection of human children.

This affection can lead fairies to exchange their own offspring for a human baby.

In the Middle Ages it was believed that to prevent fairies from taking children away, they had to dress them inside out at night, or put them to bed with their feet on the head of the bed.

Other traditions, much more sinister, report some abominable methods to find out if a child is human or a Changeling, that is, the child of some creature from the magical world.

Legends hold that the Changeling, like almost all faerie beings, instinctively fear steel, which is why small cuts and incisions were made in the skin of suspects and the reaction, which could well be death, was awaited. in the event that it was indeed a Changeling.

We prefer not to imagine how many innocent people died from infections caused by this absurd belief.

Now, what happens when the change has already occurred?

In general terms, fairy babies can be easily recognized. These children usually have an excessive appetite and a highly developed intelligence. Physically they look like normal children, except for having their eyes a little further apart than usual. They know their origin and it doesn’t take long until they decide to cross the border and return to the fairy world.

One of the most famous disappearances occurs in one of the Grimm brothers’ stories. There, a woman suspects that her son is not human and she decides to prove it through a trick: spilling beer on the shell of an acorn.

Faced with this oddity, the Changeling responds:

Now I’m as old as an oak in the forest,
but I have never seen beer brewed in an acorn.

(Now I am as old as an oak in the woods, but I have never seen beer being brewed in an acorn)

After these mysterious words the Changeling disappeared.

In order not to unnecessarily alarm mothers, it must be said that not all human children were coveted by fairies.

It was believed that fairies have a certain predilection for red-haired children, whom they see as distant descendants of their own lineage.

For folklorists, this affinity between fairies and other magical creatures with human children comes from a remote time when belief in small supernatural beings was forged.

Many scholars associate fairies and other beings of the fairy world with the indigenous inhabitants of the European regions where these beliefs were forged.

Let’s imagine the following: the invaders settled in an already occupied territory; The original inhabitants have two possibilities: search for a new territory or merge with the new culture. There is almost always a mixture of both things, but the important thing is that the invaders preserve in their legends the memory of those original inhabitants.

With time, and a little poetry, they are given certain magical characteristics. Now, it is known that towns in a primitive state tend to be easy prey for plagues and massive infections, so it is not unreasonable to say that it was very common for plagued towns to try to take healthy children from neighboring towns.

The legend of the Changeling would be the echo of these events.

Another explanation, perhaps more reasonable, assures that the legend of the Changeling It rests on the mystery that mental illnesses in children represented for the ancients. Autism or mental retardation were thus explained through the intervention of fairies and other beings.

There is a story of Changelings very popular in Norse myths. There is the case of an exchange between a Troll child growing up on a farm while the other human baby is raised among the trolls.

One day the human father begins to suspect that his son is actually a Changeling, but the mother defends him tenaciously.

The anonymous author of the story tries to make it clear that the mother knows positively that her child is a Changeling, but she has nevertheless come to love him and will not allow him to be mistreated.

Years pass and one afternoon the father finds his real son in the forest, that is, his human son; who gratefully tells him that every time he tried to hurt his substitute son to prove that she was a Changeling, an identical situation occurred in the trolls’ house.

If he had hurt the Changeling troll dad would have done the same to him.

In Celtic myths the Changeling is called Plentyn Newyd. At first he takes on the physical characteristics of the family that raises him, but soon begins to show his true nature, acquiring quite monstrous features.

His behavior becomes violent, and he even attacks his siblings and parents by biting them terribly.

To confirm whether or not it is a Changeling, food must be prepared in an oven fueled with oak wood, although in other versions it is enough to give it food on an eggshell. If the child runs away in terror after tasting the food there, it was considered irrefutable proof that it was a Changeling.

In almost all mythologies more or less the same thing happens. The danger of a fairy taking a human baby is accentuated when an unmarried woman stares at the child, since her still infertile gaze grants the fairies power over the infant.

Beautiful children and new mothers are the ones most exposed to the exchange.

Already in a more recent period, the myth of the Changelings It gained renewed strength with the advent of beliefs in lower astral creatures.

In her book Psychic Self Defense, Dion Fortune maintains that certain lower astral creatures can be attracted to the energy that is released from conception, gravitating over the womb of pregnant women and, if the occasion is right, gliding towards the unborn in the hope of possessing it.

This belief comes directly from the Changelings, whose greatest exponent is the Hebrew myth of the Dybbuk, the demon that wants to be born.

To close this article it is worth pointing out one of the best horror stories about Changelings. This is HP Lovecraft’s story: Pickman’s Model, where a young and talented artist is actually a Changeling descended from an abominable race of subterranean creatures.

About this creature, the English writer Charlotte Mew wrote a magnificent poem: The Changeling.

More fantastic beings from mythology. I Comparative mythology.

More comparative mythology:

This article: Changelings: the children of fairies raised by human women was made by . For reproduction, write to us at