Fairies, Folklore and Forteana

SIMON YOUNG FILES A NEW REPORT FROM THE INTERFACE OF STRANGE PHENOMENA AND FOLK BELIEF

CHANGES

Parish and church records are dull documents with occasional flecks of gold. Long lists of forenames and surnames – the “noiseless tenor of their way” – enlivened by occasional asides about suicide, murder and passion (“she named x as the father”). There are also hints of folklore and forteana. A nice example of this has just been sent to me from Scotland. A photograph shows that in the Ardnamurchan kirk session, c. 1789, provision was made for a “changeling” to be kept by his family. ‘Changeling’ traditionally refers, of course, to someone who had been changed by the fairies: “the meaning being that the fairies had slipped away the mother’s own child and substituted a little fiend in human form in its stead” (see FT373:30-37).

What were changelings really? Typically, they were kids with developmental problems. Many ‘changelings’ in Ireland, for instance, were boys who had lost or who had never had the ability to walk: poignantly, parents believed the fairies had taken their true child. The fact that money was given to the child’s family by the kirk authorities suggests that the child required special care. There is nothing surprising here. Changeling beliefs survived in isolated rural areas, particularly ones where English was not the principal language, well into the 19th century. My guess is that, c. 1800, perhaps

“THE FAIRIES HAD SLIPPED AWAY THE MOTHER’S OWN CHILD AND SUBSTITUTED A LITTLE FIEND”

10 per cent of the inhabitants of Britain and Ireland believed that fairies could change children and were primed to interpret disability as something fey. Was this the case in Ardnamurchan? Well, Ardnamurchan was a difficult-to-reach Gælic-speaking peninsula on the Atlantic coast, in an area where fairy belief mattered. I would be flabbergasted if changeling beliefs did not feature there, c. 1850, nevermind in the 1780s.

There is a complication, though. Apparently, the word ‘changeling’ was used several times in the Ardnamurchan kirk sessions in the later 18th century. If that is the case, it looks as if a kirk officer systematically employed ‘changeling’ as a word for children with developmental issues. It would be interesting to see if other terms were used (like that cruelVictorian standby ‘imbecile’). Three possibilities. Was this a word that had been shorn of fairy meaning? ‘Changeling’ was occasionally used in English to mean a disabled child, without any supernatural overtones, prior to the 19th century. Did a kirk officer write ‘changeling’ to refer straightforwardly to the beliefs of parents, perhaps as a translation from a Gælic term? Or was it a bit of both? Here was an unusual term for a disabled child. It would pass muster with any visitor from Edinburgh, while it also acknowledged the sovereignty of the people under the hill in local convictions. My money would be on the third.