The Skriker Actor Packet

as though it were very heavy could
trick the child into saying something
like, “In my long life, I have never
seen anything like that” !Scott 121".
#
# The swap was thought to be
prevented by hanging iron or a
crucifix over the child’s crib, as fairies
were supposedly afraid of these.
Draping the father’s clothes over the
child while they slept was also a way
to prevent fairies from switching the
child. While human children were
assumed to be taken to act as
servants to the fairies, another
possibility is that human children
were considered beautiful, and taken out of a desire to posses that beauty and
youth. Children who were exceptionally beautiful, or who had not yet been
baptized were more likely to be swapped with fairies.
The Fate of Changeling Children...
# In Northern England and Scotland,
stories tell of the changeling babies growing
sick and discontented $$ usually only living for
a few years, and often never into their teens.
Other stories say they eventually wander o% to
rejoin the fairy world. If they do grow old, they
cease to become human, and were thought of
as oafs and therefore disowned by society.
Human children living in the fairy world
constantly pined for their human families and
eventually were thought to wither away and die
from grief.