The Science of Fairy Tales Part 6

In all the stories the end is the same, namely, to excite the curiosity and wonder of the imp to such a pitch that he gives expression to it in language akin to that of the North German or the Danish tale just quoted. The measure of age given in his exclamation is usually that of the trees in the forest, or indeed the forest itself. In the instance from Mecklenburg, Bohemian gold (_Bohmer Gold_) is made the measure, and this runs through quite a number of Low Dutch stories. There can be little doubt, however, that it is a corruption, and that the true form is, as given in a Schleswig-Holstein tale, Bohemian Forest (_Behmer Woelt_).[83] In Hesse Wester Forest (_Westerwald_) is found, and so on in other countries, the narrator in each case referring to some wood well known to his audience. The Lithuanian elf, or _laumes_, says: "I am so old, I was already in the world before the Kamschtschen Wood was planted, wherein great trees grew, and _that_ is now laid waste again; but anything so wonderful I have never seen." In Normandy the changeling declares: "I have seen the Forest of Ardennes burnt seven times, but I never saw so many pots boil." The astonishment of a Scandinavian imp expressed itself even more graphically, for when he saw an egg-sh.e.l.l boiling on the fire having one end of a measuring rod set in it, he crept out of the cradle on his hands, leaving his feet still inside, and stretched himself out longer and longer until he reached right across the floor and up the chimney, when he exclaimed: "Well! seven times have I seen the wood fall in Lesso Forest, but never till now have I seen so big a ladle in so small a pot!" And the Danish story I have cited above represents the child as saying that he has seen a young wood thrice upon Tiis Lake.[84] The Welsh fairies are curiously youthful compared with these h.o.a.ry infants, which is all the more remarkable when the daring exaggerations of Cambrian story-tellers are considered. It is a modest claim only to have seen the acorn before the oak and the egg before the hen, yet that is all that is put forward. In one of the Lays of Marie de France the wood of Brezal is indicated as the spot where the oak was seen.[85] The formula thus variously used would appear to be a common one to describe great antiquity, and in all probability itself dates back to a very remote period.

But changelings frequently conform to the more civilized usage of measuring their age by years. And various are the estimates given us, from fifteen hundred years in the Emerald Isle down to the computation, erring perhaps on the other side, of the young gentleman in the English tale, who remarks: "Seven years old was I before I came to the nurse, and four years have I lived since, and never saw so many milk-pans before." A yet more mysterious hint as to her earlier life is dropped by an imp in Brittany. She has been treated to the sight of milk boiling in egg-sh.e.l.ls, and cries: "I shall soon be a hundred years old, but I never saw so many sh.e.l.ls boiling! I was born in Pif and in Paf, in the country where cats are made; but I never saw anything like it!"[86] To all right-minded persons this disclosure contained sufficient warrant for her reputed mother to repudiate her as a witch, though cats are no less intimate with fairies than with conjurers.

Simrock, in his work on German mythology already cited, inclines to the opinion that the object of the ceremony which the suspected child is made to witness is to produce laughter. He says: "The dwarf is no over-ripe beauty who must keep her age secret. Rather something ridiculous must be done to cause him to laugh, because laughter brings deliverance."[87] The problem set before the heroes of many folk-tales is to compel laughter, but that does not seem to be intended in these changeling stories. At least I have only met with it in one, and it certainly is not common. The confession of age which the ceremony draws forth is really much more. It is a confession that the apparently human babe is an imposture, that it belongs in fact to a different race, and has no claim on the mother's care and tenderness. Therefore it is not always enough for the fraud to be discovered: active means must sometimes be taken to rid the family of their supernatural burden and regain their own little one. In Grimm's story, in which the child laughs, a host of elves comes suddenly bringing back the true and carrying away the false one; and in many of the German and Northern tales the changeling disappears in one way or other immediately after its exclamation. We are sometimes even told in so many words that the changeling had betrayed himself, and the underground folk were obliged to give back the stolen child. And in the Lithuanian story we have cited the _laumes_ straightway falls sick and dies.[88] Such conduct accords entirely with the resentment at being recognized which we have in a previous chapter found to be a characteristic of spiritual existences.

It is much more like the dislike of being found out attributed to beings who are in the habit of walking invisible, than any mystical effect of laughter.

If this be so, still less do the stories where it is required actually to drive the imp away support the learned German's contention. The means taken in these stories are very various. Sometimes it is enough to let the child severely alone, as once in the Isle of Man where a woman laid her child down in the field while she was cutting corn, and a fairy changed it there and then. The changeling began to scream, but the mother was prevented by a man who had been a witness to the transaction from picking it up; and when the fairy found that no notice was taken the true child was brought back. In the island of Lewis the custom was to dig a grave in the fields on Quarter Day and lay the goblin in it until the next morning, by which time it was believed the human babe would be returned. In the north of Germany one is advised not to touch the changeling with the hands, but to overturn the cradle so that the child falls on the floor. The elf must then be swept out of the door with an old broom, when the dwarfs will come and bring back the stolen child. Putting it on the dunghill and leaving it there to cry has been practised successfully in England; but in Ireland this is only one part of a long and serious ceremony directed by a wizard or "fairy-man." In dealing with these stories we must always remember that not merely are we concerned with sagas of something long past, but with a yet living superst.i.tion, and that the practices I am about to mention--even the most cruel and the most ridiculous of them--so far respond to the actual beliefs of the people that instances of their occurrence are quite recent and well authenticated, as we shall presently see. An anonymous but well-informed writer describes, as if it were by no means an unusual ceremony, that just referred to; and Kennedy gives the same in the shape of a legend. It seems to consist in taking a clean shovel and seating the changeling on its broad iron blade, and thus conveying the creature to the manure heap. The a.s.sistants would then join hands and circle about the heap thrice while the fairy-man chanted an incantation in the Irish language. At its conclusion all present would withdraw into the house, leaving the child where it had been placed, to howl and cry as it pleased. Says Mr. Kennedy: "They soon felt the air around them sweep this way and that, as if it was stirred by the motion of wings, but they remained quiet and silent for about ten minutes. Opening the door, they then looked out, and saw the bundle of straw on the heap, but neither child nor fairy. 'Go into your bedroom, Katty,' said the fairy-man, 'and see if there's anything left on the bed!' She did so, and they soon heard a cry of joy, and Katty was among them in a moment, kissing and hugging her own healthy-looking child, who was waking and rubbing his eyes, and wondering at the lights and all the eager faces."[89]

Whether it was the noise made by the child or the incantation that drew the "good people's" attention, we are left in doubt by this story. A Norman woman was, however, advised to make her child cry l.u.s.tily "in order to bring its _real_ mother to it." And this is probably the meaning of the many tales in which the elf is beaten, or starved and subjected to other ill-usage, or is threatened with death.[90] In the Pflockenstein Lake in Bohemia wild women are believed to dwell, who, among other attributes common to elves or fairies, are believed to change infants. In order to compel a re-exchange, directions are given to bind with a weed growing at the bottom of the lake and to beat with a rod of the same, calling out therewithal: "Take thine own and bring me mine." A mother in a Little Russian tale had a baby of extraordinary habits. When alone, he jumped out of the cradle, no longer a baby but a bearded old man, gobbled up the food out of the stove, and then lay down again a screeching babe. A wise woman who was consulted placed him on a block of wood and began to chop the block under his feet. He screeched and she chopped; he screeched and she chopped; until he became an old man again and made the enigmatical confession: "I have transformed myself not once nor twice only. I was first a fish, then I became a bird, an ant, and a quadruped, and now I have once more made trial of being a human being. It isn't better thus than being among the ants; but among human beings--it isn't worse!" Here the chopping was evidently a threat to kill. Nor, if we may trust the stories, was this threat always an empty one. The changeling fas.h.i.+oned out of a broom in the Lithuanian story already cited, was disposed of, by the parish priest's advice, by hewing its head off. The reason given by the holy man was that it was not yet four and twenty hours old, and it would not be really alive until the expiration of that time. Accordingly when the neck was severed nothing but a wisp of straw was found inside, though blood flowed as if there were veins.[91]

But even more truculent methods are represented by the story-tellers as resorted to free the afflicted household. Nothing short of fire is often deemed sufficient for the purpose. There were various methods of applying it. Sometimes we are told of a shovel being made red-hot and held before the child's face; sometimes he is seated on it and flung out into the dung-pit, or into the oven; or again, the poker would be heated to mark the sign of the cross on his forehead, or the tongs to take him by the nose. Or he is thrown bodily on the fire, or suspended over it in a creel or a pot; and in the north of Scotland the latter must be hung from a piece of the branch of a hazel tree. In this case we are told that if the child screamed it was a changeling, and it was held fast to prevent its escape. Generally, however, it is related that the elf flies up the chimney, and when safely at the top he stops to make uncomplimentary remarks upon his persecutors. In the Nithsdale story which I have already cited, the servant girl at midnight covers up the chimney and every other inlet, makes the embers glowing hot, and undressing the changeling tosses it on them. In answer to its yells the fairies are heard moaning and rattling at the window boards, the chimney-head, and the door. "In the name o' G.o.d, bring back the bairn,"

she exclaims. In a moment up flew the window, the human child was laid unharmed on the mother's lap, while its guilty subst.i.tute flew up the chimney with a loud laugh.[92]

Frightful as this cruelty would seem to every one if perpetrated on the mother's own offspring, it was regarded with equanimity as applied to a goblin; and it is not more frightful than what has been actually perpetrated on young children, and that within a very few years, under the belief that they were beings of a different race. Instances need not be multiplied; it will be enough to show that one of the horrible methods of disposing of changelings referred to in the last paragraph came under judicial notice no longer ago than the month of May 1884. Two women were reported in the "Daily Telegraph" as having been arrested at Clonmel on the 17th of that month, charged with cruelly ill-treating a child three years old. The evidence given was to the effect that the neighbours fancied that the child, who had not the use of his limbs, was a changeling. During the mother's absence the prisoners accordingly entered her house and placed the child naked on a hot shovel, "under the impression that this would break the charm." As might have been expected the poor little thing was severely burnt, and, when the women were apprehended, it was in a precarious condition. The prisoners, on being remanded, were hooted by an indignant crowd. It might be thought that this was an indication of the decay of superst.i.tion, even in Ireland, however much to be condemned as an outburst of feeling against unconvicted and even untried persons. But we must regard it rather as a protest against the prisoners' inhumanity than against their superst.i.tion: in either case, of course, the product of advancing civilization. For if we may trust the witness of other sagas we find the trial by fire commuted to a symbolic act, as though men had begun to be revolted by the cruelty, even when committed only on a fairy who had been found out, but were unwilling to abandon their belief in the power of the exorcism. In the north-east of Scotland, for example, where a beggar, who had diagnosed a changeling, was allowed to try his hand at disposing of it, he made a large fire on the hearth and held a black hen over it till she struggled, and finally escaped from his grasp, flying out by the "lum." More minute directions are given by the cunning man in a Glamorgans.h.i.+re tale. After poring over his big book, he told his distracted client to find a black hen without a single feather of any other colour. This she was to bake (not living, but dead, as appears by the sequel) before a fire of wood (not, as usual, of peat), with feathers and all intact. Every window and opening was to be closed, except one--presumably the chimney; and she was not to watch the _crimbil_, or changeling, until the hen had been done enough, which she would know by the falling off of all her feathers. The more knowing woman, in an Irish story, attributes the fact of the infant's being changed to the Evil Eye; and her directions for treatment require the mother to watch for the woman who has given it the Evil Eye, inveigle her into the house and cut a piece secretly out of her cloak. This piece of the cloak was then to be burnt close to the child until the smoke made him sneeze, when the spell would be broken and her own child restored. The writer who records this tale mentions the following mode of proceeding as a common one, namely: to place the babe in the middle of the cabin and light a fire round it, fully expecting it to be changed into a sod of turf, but manifestly not intending to do bodily harm to it independently of any such change. In Carnarvons.h.i.+re a clergyman is credited with telling a mother to cover a shovel with salt, mark a cross in the salt, and burn it in the chamber where the child was, judiciously opening the window first.[93] It is satisfactory to know that, so far as the recorded cases go, the ceremony lost nothing of its power by being thus toned down.

Fire, however, was not the only element efficacious for turning to flight these troublesome aliens. Water's antagonism to witches is notorious; and ample use was made of it in the old witch trials. It is equally obnoxious to fairies and their congeners. In a Welsh story from Radnors.h.i.+re, when the mother has been by the egg-sh.e.l.l device convinced of the exchange of her own twin children, she takes the goblin twins and flings them into Llyn Ebyr; but their true kinsmen clad in blue trousers (their usual garb) save them, and the mother receives her own again. In other tales she drops the twins into the river; but in one case the witch who has been credited with the change bathes the child at a mountain spout, or _pistyll_, and exacts a promise from the mother to duck him in cold water every morning for three months. It is not very surprising to learn that "at the end of that time there was no finer infant in the Cwm."[94]

There is an oft-quoted pa.s.sage in Luther's "Table Talk," in which he relates that he told the Prince of Anhalt that if he were prince he would venture _homicidium_ upon a certain changeling with which he had been brought into contact, and throw it into the river Moldaw. The great Reformer was only on a level with his countrymen in their superst.i.tions in reference to changelings, or Killcrops, as they were then called. I have already quoted his opinion of them as devils; and the test of their true nature, which he seems to have thought infallible, was their inordinate appet.i.te; nor did he attach any value to baptism as a means of exorcism. One excellent tale he tells on the subject concerns a peasant who lived near Halberstadt, in Saxony. This good man, in accordance with advice, was taking the child to Halberstadt to be rocked at the shrine of the Virgin Mary, when in crossing a river another devil that was below in the river called out "Killcrop! Killcrop!" Then, says Luther, the child in the basket, that had never before spoken one word, answered "Ho, ho!" The devil in the water asked, "Whither art thou going?" and the child replied, "I am going to Halberstadt to our Loving Mother, to be rocked." In his fright the man threw the basket containing the child over the bridge into the water, whereupon the two devils flew away together and cried "Ho, ho, ha!" tumbling themselves one over another, and so vanished.[95] This may be taken as a type of many a story current in North Germany and the neighbouring Slavonic lands. It is not, however, unknown in this country. Mr. Hunt has versified a Cornish tale in which the mother took her brat to the chapel well to plunge it at dawn and pa.s.s it round slowly three times _against_ the sun, as she had been advised to do on the first three Wednesdays in the month of May. Reaching the top of the hill on one of these occasions, she heard a shrill voice in her ear: "Tredrill, Tredrill! thy wife and children greet thee well." The little one of course replied, much to her astonishment, repudiating all concern for his wife and children, and intimating his enjoyment of the life he was leading, and the spell that was being wrought in his behalf. In the end she got rid of him by the homely process of beating and leaving him on the ground near the old church stile. A Sutherlands.h.i.+re tradition tells of a child less than a year old who suddenly addressed his mother in verse as he was being carried through a wild glen. Translated, the youth's impromptu lines run thus:--

"Many is the dun hummel cow (Each having a calf) In the opposite dun glen, Without the aid of dog, Or man, or woman, or gillie, One man excepted, And he grey----"

At that moment his remarks were interrupted by the terrified woman throwing him down in the plaid which wrapt him, and scampering home, where to her joy she found her true babe smiling in the cradle.[96]

These verses carry us back to the egg-sh.e.l.l episode, from which the consideration of the means adopted to drive away the intrusive goblin has diverted us. They contain a vague a.s.sertion of age like those then before us, but not a hint of laughter. Nor have we found anything throughout the whole discussion to favour Simrock's suggestion, or to shake the opinion that the dissolution of the fairy spell was derived either from the vexation of the supernatural folk at their own self-betrayal, or from the disclosure to the human foster-parents of the true state of the facts, and their consequent determination to exorcise the demon.

It is true we have a few more stories to examine, but we shall find that they all confirm this conclusion. The cases we have yet to deal with, except the first, exhibit a different and much more humane treatment of the changeling than the foregoing. The case excepted is found in Carnarvons.h.i.+re, where one infallible method of getting rid of the child was to place it on the floor and let all present in the house throw a piece of iron at it. The old woman who mentioned this to Professor Rhys conjectured that the object was to convince the _Tylwyth Teg_, or fairy people, of the intention to kill the babe, in order to induce them to bring the right child back.[97] This would be the same motive as that which threatened death by fire or other ill-usage, in some of the instances mentioned above. But we could not thus account for the requirement that iron, and only iron, was to be used; and here we have, in fact, a superst.i.tion carefully preserved, while its meaning has quite pa.s.sed out of memory. In a future chapter we shall examine the att.i.tude of mythical beings in folklore to metals, and especially to iron; in the meantime we may content ourselves with noting this addition to the examples we have already met with of the horror with which they regarded it.

So far from its being always deemed wise to neglect or injure the changeling, it was not infrequently supposed to be necessary to take the greatest care of it, thereby and by other means to propitiate its elvish tribe. This was the course pursued with the best results by a Devons.h.i.+re mother; and a woman at Stra.s.sberg, in North Germany, was counselled by all her gossips to act lovingly, and above all not to beat the imp, lest her own little one be beaten in turn by the underground folk. So in a Hessian tale mentioned by Grimm, a _wichtel-wife_ caught almost in the act of kidnapping refused to give up the babe until the woman had placed the changed one to her breast, and "nourished it for once with the generous milk of human kind." In Ireland, even when the child is placed on a dunghill, the charm recited under the direction of the "fairy-man"

promises kindly entertainment in future for the "gambolling crew," if they will only undo what they have done. A method in favour in the north of Scotland is to take the suspected elf to some known haunt of its race, generally, we are told, some spot where peculiar soughing sounds are heard, or to some barrow, or stone circle, and lay it down, repeating certain incantations the while. What the words of these incantations are we are not informed, but we learn that an offering of bread, b.u.t.ter, milk, cheese, eggs, and flesh of fowl must accompany the child. The parents then retire for an hour or two, or until after midnight; and if on returning these things have disappeared, they conclude that the offering is accepted and their own child returned.[98]

Neither ill-usage nor kindness, neither neglect nor propitiation, was sometimes prescribed and acted upon, but--harder than either--a journey to Fairyland to fetch back the captive. A man on the island of Rugen, whose carelessness had occasioned the loss of his child, watched until the underground dwellers sallied forth on another raid, when he hastened to the mouth of the hole that led into their realm, and went boldly down. There in the Underworld he found the child, and thus the robbers were forced to take their own again instead. In a more detailed narrative from Islay, the father arms himself with a Bible, a dirk, and a crowing c.o.c.k, and having found the hill where the "Good People" had their abode open, and filled with the lights and sounds of festival, he approached and stuck the dirk into the threshold. The object of this was to prevent the entrance from closing upon him. Then he steadily advanced, protected from harm by the Bible at his breast. Within, his boy (who was thirteen or fourteen years of age) was working at the forge; but when the man demanded him the elves burst into a loud laugh, which aroused the c.o.c.k in his arms. The c.o.c.k at once leaped upon his shoulders, flapped his wings, and crowed loud and long. The enraged elves thereupon cast the man and his son both out of the hill, and flung the dirk after them; and in an instant all was dark. It should be added that for a year and a day afterwards the boy did no work, and scarcely spoke; but he ultimately became a very famous smith, the inventor of a specially fine and well-tempered sword. The changeling himself in one of Lady Wilde's tales directs his foster-mother to Fairyland. The way thither was down a well; and she was led by the portress, an old woman, into the royal palace. There the queen admits that she stole the child, "for he was so beautiful," and put her own instead. The re-exchange is effected, and the good woman is feasted with food which the fairies cannot touch, because it has been sprinkled with salt. When she found herself again at home, she fancied she had only been away an hour: it was three years.[99]

But it was not always necessary to incur the risk of going as far as the other world. The Glamorgans.h.i.+re woman, whose successful cooking of a black hen has been already referred to, had first to go at full moon to a place where four roads met, and hide herself to watch the fairy procession which pa.s.sed at midnight. There in the midst of the music and the _Bendith eu mammau_ she beheld her own dear little child. One of the most interesting changeling stories was gravely related in the "Irish Fireside" for the 7th of January 1884, concerning a land-leaguer who had been imprisoned as a suspect under the then latest Coercion Act.

When this patriot was a boy he had been stolen by the fairies, one of themselves having been left in his place. The parish priest, however, interfered; and by a miracle he caused the elf for a moment to disappear, and the boy to return to tell him the conditions on which his captivity might be ended. The information given, the goblin again replaced the true son; but the good priest was now able to deal effectually with the matter. The imp was accordingly dipped thrice in Lough Lane (a small lake in the eastern part of Westmeath), when "a curl came on the water, and up from the deep came the naked form of the boy, who walked on the water to meet his father on sh.o.r.e. The father wrapped his overcoat about his son, and commenced his homeward march, accompanied by a line of soldiers, who also came out of the lake. The boy's mother was enjoined not to speak until the rescuing party would reach home. She accidentally spoke; and immediately the son dropped a tear, and forced himself out of his father's arms, piteously exclaiming: 'Father, father, my mother spoke! You cannot keep me. I must go.' He disappeared, and, reaching home, the father found the sprite again on the hearth." The ghostly father's services were called into requisition a second time; and better luck awaited an effort under his direction after the performance of a second miracle like the first. For this time the mother succeeded in holding her tongue, notwithstanding that at every stream on the way home from the lake the car on which the boy was carried was upset, and he himself fainted.[100] This is declared to have happened no longer ago than the year 1869. The writer, apparently a pious Roman Catholic, who vouches for the fact, probably never heard the touching tale of Orpheus and Eurydice.

The foregoing story, as well as some of those previously mentioned, shows that fairy depredations were by no means confined to babes and young children. Indeed adults were often carried off; and, although this chapter is already far too long, I cannot close it without briefly examining a few such cases. Putting aside those, then, in which boys or young men have been taken, as already sufficiently discussed, all the other cases of robbery, as distinguished from seduction or illusion, are concerned with matrons. The elfin race were supposed to be on the watch for unchurched or unsained mothers to have the benefit of their milk. In one instance the captive was reputed to have freed herself by promising in exchange her husband's best mare under milk, which was retained by the captors until it was exhausted and almost dead. More usually the story relates that a piece of wood is carved in the likeness of the lady and laid in her place, the husband and friends being deceived into believing it to be herself. A man returning home at night overhears the supernatural beings at work. He listens and catches the words: "Mak' it red cheekit an' red lippit like the smith o' Bonnykelly's wife."

Mastering the situation he runs off to the smith's house, and sains the new mother and her babe. And he is only just in time, for hardly has he finished than a great thud is heard outside. On going out a piece of bog-fir is found,--the image the fairies intended to subst.i.tute for the smith's wife. In North German and Danish tales it is the husband who overhears the conspirators at work, and he often has coolness enough to watch their proceedings on his return home and, bouncing out upon them, to catch them just as they are about to complete their crime. Thus, one clever fellow succeeded in retaining both his wife and the image already put into her bed, which he thrust into the oven to blaze and crackle in the sight and hearing of his wife's a.s.sembled friends, who supposed he was burning her until he produced her to their astonished gaze. A tale from Badenoch represents the man as discovering the fraud from finding his wife, a woman of unruffled temper, suddenly turned a shrew. So he piles up a great fire and threatens to throw the occupant of the bed upon it unless she tells him what has become of his own wife. She then confesses that the latter has been carried off, and she has been appointed successor; but by his determination he happily succeeds in recapturing his own at a certain fairy knoll near Inverness.[101]

It happens occasionally that these victims of elfin gallantry are rescued by other men than their husbands. A smith at work one day hears a great moaning and sobbing out of doors. Looking out he sees a troll driving a pregnant woman before him, and crying to her continually: "A little further yet! a little further yet!" He instantly springs forward with a red-hot iron in his hand, which he holds between the troll and his thrall, so that the former has to abandon her and take to flight.

The smith then took the woman under his protection, and the same night she was delivered of twins. Going to the husband to console him for his loss, he is surprised to find a woman exactly resembling his friend's wife in her bed. He saw how the matter stood, and seizing an axe he killed the witch on the spot, and restored to the husband his real wife and new-born children. This is a Danish legend; but there is a Highland one very similar to it. A man meets one night a troop of fairies with a prize of some sort. Recollecting that fairies are obliged to exchange whatever they may have with any one who offers them anything, no matter what its value, for it, he flings his bonnet to them, calling out: "Mine is yours, and yours is mine!" The prize which they dropped turned out to be an English lady whom they had carried off, leaving in her place a stock, which, of course, died and was buried. The Sa.s.senach woman lived for some years in the Highlander's house, until the captain in command of an English regiment came to lodge in his house with his son, while the soldiers were making new roads through the country. There the son recognized his mother, and the father his wife long mourned as dead.[102]

The death and burial of changelings, though, as here, occurring in the tales, are not often alluded to; and there are grounds for thinking them a special deduction of the Scottish mind. Sometimes the incident is ghastly enough to satisfy the devoted lover of horrors. The west of Scotland furnishes an instance in which the exchange was not discovered until after the child's apparent death. It was buried in due course; but suspicion having been aroused, the grave and coffin were opened, and not a corpse but only a wooden figure was found within. A farmer at Kintraw, in Argylls.h.i.+re, lost his wife. On the Sunday after the funeral, when he and his servants returned from church, the children, who had been left at home, reported that their mother had been to see them, and had combed and dressed them. The following Sunday they made the same statement, in spite of the punishment their father had thought proper to inflict for telling a lie on the first occasion. The next time she came the eldest child asked her why she came, when she said that she had been carried off by "the good people," and could only get away for an hour or two on Sundays, and should her coffin be opened it would be found to contain nothing but a withered leaf. The minister, however, who ridiculed the story, refused to allow the coffin to be opened; and when, some little time after, he was found dead near the Fairies' Hill, above Kintraw, he was held by many to be a victim to the indignation of the fairy world he had laughed at. Sir Walter Scott mentions the tale of a farmer's wife in Lothian, who, after being carried off by the fairies, reappeared repeatedly on Sunday to her children, and combed their hair. On one of these occasions the husband met her, and was told that there was one way to recover her, namely, by lying in wait on Hallowe'en for the procession of fairies, and stepping boldly out, and seizing her as she pa.s.sed among them. At the moment of execution, however, his heart failed, and he lost his wife for ever. In connection with this, Scott refers to a real event which happened at the town of North Berwick. A widower, who was paying addresses with a view to second marriage, was troubled by dreams of his former wife, to whom he had been tenderly attached. One morning he declared to the minister that she had appeared to him the previous night, stating that she was a captive in Fairyland, and begged him to attempt her deliverance. The mode she prescribed was to bring the minister and certain others to her grave at midnight to dig up her body, and recite certain prayers, after which the corpse would become animated and flee from him. It was to be pursued by the swiftest runner in the parish, and if he could catch it before it had encircled the church thrice, the rest were to come to his help and hold it notwithstanding its struggles, and the shapes into which it might be transformed. In this way she would be redeemed. The minister, however, declined to take part in so absurd and indecent a proceeding.[103]

Absurd and indecent it would undoubtedly have been to unearth a dead body in the expectation of any such result; but it would have been entirely in harmony with current superst.i.tion. The stories and beliefs examined in the present chapter prove that there has been no superst.i.tion too gross, or too cruel, to survive into the midst of the civilization of the nineteenth century; and the exhumation of a corpse, of the two, is less barbarous than the torture by fire of an innocent child. The flight, struggles, and transformation of a bespelled lady are found both in _marchen_ and saga: some examples of the latter will come under our notice in a future chapter.

FOOTNOTES:

[60] The belief in changelings is not confined to Europe, though the accounts we have of it elsewhere are meagre. It is found, as we shall see further on, in China. It is found also among the natives of the Pacific slopes of North America, where it is death to the mother to suckle the changeling. Dorman, p. 24, citing Bancroft.

[61] See a curious Scottish ballad given at length, "F. L. Record," vol.

i. p. 235; Henderson, p. 15; "Cymru Fu N. and Q." vol. ii. p. 144; Gregor, p. 11 (_cf._ Harland and Wilkinson, p. 221); Cromek, p. 247. See Webster, p. 73, where a witch carries away a child who is not blessed when it sneezes.

[62] Napier, p. 40; "F. L. Journal," vol. i. p. 56; Kuhn, pp. 365, 196; Knoop, p. 155; "Zeits. f. Volksk." vol. ii. p. 33; Kennedy, p. 95; Carnoy, p. 4; "F. L. Journal," vol. ii. p. 257.

[63] Bartsch, vol. i. pp. 64, 89; vol. ii. p. 43; Kuhn, p. 195; Knoop, _loc. cit._; Jahn, pp. 52, 71; Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 174; "Zeits. f.

Volksk." vol. ii. _loc. cit._ W. Map, Dist. ii. c. 14; Brand, vol. ii.

p. 8, note; Lady Wilde, vol. i. pp. 71, 73; Schleicher, p. 93; Tertullian, "Adv. Nationes," l. ii. c. 11; Brand, vol. ii. p. 334 note, quoting Martin, "History of the Western Islands"; Train, vol. ii. p.

132; "Sacred Books of the East," vol. xxiv. p. 277. As to the use of fire in China, see "F. L. Journal," vol. v. p. 225; and generally as to the efficacy of fire in driving off evil spirits see Tylor, vol. ii. p.

177.

[64] Grimm, "Teut. Myth." p. 468; Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 2, vol. iii. p.

45; Train, vol. ii. p. 133; Garnett, pp. 231, 315; "F. L. Journal," vol.

v. p. 225. In Eastern Prussia a steel used for striking a light, a hammer, or anything else that will strike fire, is used. This seems to combine the dread of steel with that of fire (Lemke, p. 41).

[65] Grimm, "Teut. Myth." _loc. cit._; Train, vol. ii. _loc. cit._; Henderson, p. 14; "F. L. Journal," vol. v. p. 224; "Zeits. f. Volksk."

vol. ii, p. 33; "N. and Q." 7th ser. vol. x. p. 185.

[66] Henderson, _loc. cit._; Bartsch, vol. ii. p. 192; Pitre, vol. xv.

pp. 154 note, 155; vol. xvii. p. 102, quoting Castelli, "Credenze ed usi"; Horace, "Ep. ad Pison," v. 340; Dorsa, p. 146; Wright, "Middle Ages," vol. i. p. 290; Garnett, p. 70; "Melusine," vol. v. p. 90, quoting English authorities. Map, Dist. ii. c. 14, gives a story of babies killed by a witch. St. Augustine records that the G.o.d Silva.n.u.s was feared as likely to injure women in child-bed, and that for their protection three men were employed to go round the house during the night and to strike the threshold with a hatchet and a pestle and sweep it with a brush; and he makes merry over the superst.i.tion ("De Civ.

Dei," l. vi. c. 9).

[67] Pitre, vol. xii. p. 304, note; vol. xv. p. 154; "F. L. Espan." vol.

ii. p. 51; De Gubernatis, "Usi Natal." p. 219, quoting Bezoles, "Le Bapteme."

[68] Bartsch, vol. i. p. 46; Jahn, p. 89; Grimm, "Teut. Myth." p. 468; Simrock, p. 418.

[69] There is another motive for the robbery of a human creature, mentioned only, I think, in the Romance of Thomas the Rhymer, namely, that at certain seasons the foul fiend fetches his fee, or tribute of a living soul, from among the underground folk. Several difficulties arise upon this; but it is needless to discuss them until the motive in question be found imputed elsewhere than in a literary work of the fifteenth century, and ballads derived therefrom.

Since the foregoing note was written my attention has been drawn to the following statement in Lady Wilde, vol. i. p. 70: "Sometimes it is said the fairies carry off the mortal child for a sacrifice, as they have to offer one every seven years to the devil in return for the power he gives them. And beautiful young girls are carried off, also, either for sacrifice or to be wedded to the fairy king." It is easier to generalize in this manner than to produce doc.u.ments in proof. And I think I am expressing the opinion of all folklore students when I say that, with all respect for Lady Wilde, I would rather not lay any stress upon her general statements. Indeed, those of anybody, however great an authority, need to be checked by the evidence of particular instances. I await such evidence.

[70] Sikes, p. 62; _cf._ Brand, vol. ii. p. 334 note; Bartsch, vol. i.

p. 46.

[71] Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 175; vol. iii. p. 43; Kuhn, p. 195; Schleicher, p. 92.

[72] Gregor, p. 61; Keightley, p. 393; Campbell, vol. ii. p. 64.

[73] Hunt, p. 96; Waldron, p. 30. This account was given to the author by the mother herself.

[74] Croker, p. 81. See a similar tale in Campbell, vol. ii. p. 58.

Gregor, p. 61, mentions the dog-hole as the way by which children are sometimes carried off.

[75] Bartsch, vol. i. p. 46; Kuhn, p. 196; Grimm, "Teut. Myth." p. 468; Poestion, p. 114; Grohmann, p. 113.

[76] Waldron, p. 29. The same writer gives a similar account of the changeling mentioned above, p. 107.

[77] "Colloquia Mensalia," quoted by Southey, "The Doctor" (London, 1848), p. 621. As to the attribute of greed, _cf._ Keightley, p. 125.