Times they aren’t a changeling
I grew up on fairy tales and fantasy stories and perhaps because of that I always found the idea of belief in fairies a bit ridiculous. They were always framed as fiction, tales for children, for entertainment purposes only. Yet in the 1920’s the Cottingley Fairies affair showed that even 20th century adults were still open to the idea of fairies in the garden. But the fairy tales of Europe are not all stories of happy dancing little people who have fun. Many tell of mischevious, malevolent entities who could be blamed for any number of problems around the home and farm.
Spring dried up? Could be nixies. Noises in the walls? Pixies. Eggs gone bad? Brownies. And so on. But the worst thing of all was that fairies (or the fair folk) could steal children and replace them with their own fay-child. These replaced children were called “changelings” and until a couple of weeks ago I thought this was yet another strange but harmless story of fairy-tale weirdness like Rumplestillskin or the witch from Hansel and Grettel. 1
A changeling baby
