Changelings

Ah changelings. What are they?  I guess there are several variations on a theme out there.  Having at several points in my life attempted to seriously research all things Fae and of the magical world(really hard btw, since stories differ everywhere and sometimes obviously different creatures seem to fall under the same name), I think I can explain roughly.  A changeling is what the fairies leave behind when they steal a human baby.  Some say that they leave one of their own, an adult or a baby,  in exchange, and other stories say they'll leave a glamoured branch or something behind, something completely not alive, but they make it appear to us to be our own baby.  Some say that the only way to know for sure if you have been tricked with a changeling is to throw your infant into a fire, at which point it will revert to a piece of wood, or show itself to be a fairy and run away screaming.  Supposedly, especially if it is a fairy, your child will behave absolutely terribly, with tantrums, screaming, crying, being impossible, refusing to eat, etc.  This makes me wonder, has anyone ever actually TESTED this fire theory?  Has anyone in the history of time ever actually had enough nerve and enough faith to throw their baby into a fire?  Yikes.   Anyway.  Why do fairies want our babies?  Some say the fae just love to be tricksters and enjoy causing us trouble.  Some say they are fascinated by our babies and consider them novel play toys.  Some say that they just play with our babies till they die, but the main goal is to get us to shoulder the burden of raising their children until they are old enough to return to the fairy community.  Some say that fairies, being immortal, cannot produce their own babies. However many there are is however many there have been and will be, minus any that die because of violent tragedies (accidents or wars usually).  So some stories say that they want to raise the babies as their own, and some say that they want to breed with us, because it makes them stronger and gives them a way of reproducing even if the offspring is not pure-blood fairy.  This whole sperm and egg idea is a fairly recent revelation, actually, so it probably made more sense back in the day than now.  Cuz I'm thinking, if they do not reproduce on their own, why would they even have the appropriate equipment to be able to reproduce when they get together with a human??

The Changeling by Charlotte Mew

TOLL no bell for me, dear Father, dear Mother,

Waste no sighs;

There are my sisters, there is my little brother

Who plays in the place called Paradise,

Your children all, your children for ever;

But I, so wild,

Your disgrace, with the queer brown face, was never,

Never, I know, but half your child!

 

In the garden at play, all day, last summer,

Far and away I heard

The sweet "tweet-tweet" of a strange new-comer,

The dearest, clearest call of a bird.

It lived down there in the deep green hollow,

My own old home, and the fairies say

The word of a bird is a thing to follow,

So I was away a night and a day.

 

One evening, too, by the nursery fire,

We snuggled close and sat round so still,

When suddenly as the wind blew higher,

Something scratched on the window-sill.

A pinched brown face peered in--I shivered;

No one listened or seemed to see;

The arms of it waved and the wings of it quivered

Whoo--I knew it had come for me!

Some are as bad as bad can be!

All night long they danced in the rain,

Round and round in a dripping chain,

Threw their caps at the window-pane,

Tried to make me scream and shout

And fling the bedclothes all about:

I meant to stay in bed that night,

And if only you had left a light

They would never have got me out!

 

Sometimes I would speak, you see,

Or answer when you spoke to me,

Because in the long, still dusks of Spring

You can hear the whole world whispering;

The shy green grasses making love,

The feathers grow on the dear grey dove,

The tiny heart of the redstart beat,

The patter of the squirrel's feet,

The pebbles pushing in the silver streams,

The rushes talking in their dreams,

The swish-swish of the bat's black wings,

The wild-wood bluebell's sweet ting-tings,

Humming and hammering at your ear,

Everything there is to hear

In the heart of hidden things.

But not in the midst of the nursery riot,

That's why I wanted to be quiet,

Couldn't do my sums, or sing,

Or settle down to anything.

And when, for that, I was sent upstairs

I did kneel down to say my prayers;

But the King who sits on your high Church steeple

Has nothing to do with us fairy people!

 

'Times I pleased you, dear Father, dear Mother,

Learned all my lessons and liked to play,

And dearly I loved the little pale brother

Whom some other bird must have called away.

Why did they bring me here to make me

Not quite bad and not quite good,

Why, unless They're wicked, do They want, in spite, to take me

Back to Their wet, wild wood?

Now, every night I shall see the windows shining,

The gold lamp's glow, and the fire's red gleam,

While the best of us are twining twigs and the rest of us are whining

In the hollow by the stream.

Black and chill are Their nights on the wold

And They live so long and They feel no pain:

I shall grow up, but never grow old,

I shall always, always be very cold,

I shall never come back again!