Fairy Changelings
A persistent theme in European folklore tells of fairies stealing children, usually unbaptized babies. In place of a kidnapped child, the fairies might leave one of their own children, or a mock-child made of wood, which would briefly give the appearance of life before seeming to sicken and die. According to some experts in fairy lore, a specific type of fairy, the spriggans, handled these furtive exchanges. Because of the widespread belief that unnatural children might not belong to the parents but to “the other crowd,” people who believed they might have a changeling engaged in a variety of strange practices to reveal the child’s true identity. These ranged from the merely unusual—such as rubbing the child with salt—to actually murderous—placing a baby in the fire (salt and fire both supposedly having the ability to drive fairies away). Gentler ways of dealing with changelings included causing the child to laugh, or simply treating the child kindly, both of which techniques could cause a reversal of the exchange so the human child returned to its family. If the switch went undetected, changelings revealed their fairy nature as they matured, displaying the subtle signs of fairy blood through odd behavior, non-human abilities, or having a much different height, eye color, or hair shade from its human parents. Alternate terms for changeling in the Celtic and Gaelic cultures include the Corpan Side or Siod Brad.
In Germany, Scandinavia, and Switzerland, the nixes took the blame for any suspected child switches. Full-grown female nixes, half-human and half-fish, a sort of freshwater mermaid, had sufficient allure to entice men to drown chasing after them. However, nixes were said to have ugly, wizened children whom they sought to exchange with healthy, attractive human babies. Nix changelings are called Wasserkopf.
