THE ELIZABETHAN FAIRIES

CHANGELING AND WITCH
Thus when a Childe haps to be gott,
Which after prooues an Ideott,
When Folke perceiue it thriueth not,
The fault therein to smother:
Some silly doting brainlesse Calfe,
That vnderstands things by the halfe,
Say that the Fayrie left this Aulfe,
And tooke away the other.42
Should a child be missing from the cradle, the nurse,
as in The Tragedie of Dido, could find legitimate excuse
for her lack of care by blaming the fairies:
0 Dido, your little sonne Ascanius
Is gone! he lay with me last night,
And in the morning he was stolne from me,
I thinke some Fairies haue beguiled
And when a question of twins arose, which involved succession
to property, the question of a changeling had
only to be raised, as in Misogon~s,~~ to cause the midwives
themselves to doubt the evidence of their own
eyes.45
Changelings, however, unlike the fairies themselves,
were neither a necessary nor an inevitable evil. Their
introduction into a mortal family could be prevented by
proper precautions, or a reexchange of fairy baby for
human baby effected by methods known to the folk. To
bring about the restitution of the mortal child, the mother
42 Drayton, Nimphidia, 11. 73-80.
43 V, I, 11. 1620-1623. Cf. also Nathaniel Willis, Mount Tabor,
P- 92.
44 111, 3.
46 Nor must it be forgotten that the fairies were believed to re-
ward the parents upon whom the changeling was foisted, with gifts,
" Making the father rich, whose child they keep." - Duchess of New-
castle, Poems and Fancies, p. 154. Cf. also W. Tale, 111, 3.