The Skriker Actor Packet

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
Away with us he's going,
The solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than he can understand.
Fact and Fiction...
! Grimm’s fairy tales have detailed accounts of atrocities being committed
against children, because they were thought to be changelings. While these are
in the context of fairy tales, records prove that the Grimm brothers were not
exaggerating. There are accounts of children being drowned, beaten, dangled
over fires, and abandoned. In the fairy tales the changeling child disappears, or
a band of fairies comes to claim their child, and return the human baby.
! Unfortunately, when a child was actually suspected of being a changeling,
they were usually driven away or killed, with no evidence that a “real” baby was
ever returned. In 1826, a four"year"old boy in Ireland was unable to speak or
stand. Anne Roche, townswomen who believed him to be a changeling dunked
him three times in the river to cleanse him of the fairy. On the third time he
went under, he drowned. Anne Roche was acquitted for murder. However, the
Grimm’s tales do suggest that parents with a changeling sought advice from
many di#erent members of society, before inflicting harm on their child.
Severe violence, while common, was not necessarily the first course of action
$Ashliman%. There are references to the changeling child’s physical disability,
along with a ravenous appetite. Since changeling children do not age the way
human children do, they remain constantly hungry and dependent on their
parents. A peasant family in pre"industrial Europe couldn’t normally a#ord to