Source: https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/sft/sft06.htm
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 14:37:35+00:00

Document:
The belief in changelings--Precautions against changing--Motives assigned for changing--Attempts frustrated--How changelings may be known--Their physical characteristics--Devices to lead them to betray themselves--Their subsequent treatment--Journey to Fairyland to fetch back the true child--Adult changelings.
Iron or steel, in the shape of needles, a key, a knife, a pair of tongs, an open pair of scissors, or in any other shape, if placed in the cradle, secured the desired end. In Bulgaria a reaping-hook is placed in a corner of the room for the same purpose. I shall not stay now to discuss the reason why supernatural beings dread and dislike iron. The open pair of scissors, however, it should be observed, has double power; for it is not only of the abhorred metal,--it is also in form a cross. The use of the cross in baptism was probably one of the reasons for the efficacy of that rite against felonious fairies. At all events, over a very wide area the cross is thought a potent protection; nor is the belief by any means confined to Christian lands. Mr. MitchellInnes tells us that the fear of changelings exists in China. "To avert the calamity of nursing a demon, dried banana-skin is burnt to ashes, which are then mixed with water. Into this the mother dips her finger and paints a cross upon the sleeping babe's forehead. In a short time the demon soul returns--for the soul wanders from the body during sleep and is free--but, failing to recognize the body thus disguised, flies off. The true soul, which has been waiting for an opportunity, now approaches the dormant body, and, if the mark has been washed off in time, takes possession of it; but if not, it, like the demon, failing to recognize the body, departs, and the child dies in its sleep." [e] How to hit the exact moment between the flight of the demon and the advent of the true soul doubtless puzzles many a Chinese mother fully as much as the cross puzzles the two competing souls. But when she is successful she baffles the evil spirit by deceit, of which the cross is made the instrument; though we may well believe that the child is not disguised in this way without reference to the cross's inherent sanctity; for it is a religious symbol among nations who never heard the gospel of the Crucified.
As we might expect, the reason why unbaptized babes are held to be so liable to these attacks is that until the initiatory rite has been performed they are looked upon as heathen, and therefore peculiarly under the dominion of evil spirits. In Sicily and in Spain an infant until baptism is called by the opprobrious epithets of Pagan, Turk, Moor, Jew. Even women will not kiss it, for to kiss a Moor, at all events in Spain, is sin; though, on the other hand, to kiss an unbaptized child, if no one else have kissed it, is sovereign against toothache. By the Greeks these little innocents are regarded not merely as not Christians, but as really less human than demoniac in their nature. This is said, indeed, to be the teaching of the Church. The lower classes, at least (and, presumably therefore, not long ago the upper classes) believe it firmly; so that an unbaptized babe is called Drakos (feminine, Drakoula), that is to say, serpent or dragon. This is the same opprobrious title that we found Gervase of Tilbury applying to the evil spirits infesting the waters of the Rhone; and we cannot doubt that it is intended to convey an imputation of Satanic nature. [h] The extent of this superstition would form an interesting subject of inquiry. If it could be established as existing now or formerly among other Christian nations (and the superstitions of Sicily and Spain just cited point to this) it would help to clear up much of the difficulty surrounding the subject of changelings, especially the motives actuating both fairies and witches in their depredations. And, as infant baptism is by no means exclusively a Christian rite, research among heathen nations would be equally pertinent.
Nor is it always the mother who arrests the theft. A trick frequently played by-the dwarfs in Northern Germany on the birth of a child was to pinch a cow's ear; and when the- animal bellowed and everybody ran out to know why, a dwarf would slip indoors and effect the change. On one such occasion -the father saw his infant being dragged out of the room. In the nick of time he grasped it and drew it towards himself. The changeling left in its place was found in the bed; and this he kept too, defying the efforts of the underground folk to regain it. At a place in North Jutland it happened many years ago in a lying-in room that the mother could get no sleep while the lights were burning. So her husband resolved to take the child in his arm, in order to keep strict watch over it so long as it was dark.
Beer in an egg-shell brew'd to be."
Of these devices, however, the normal one is that of the egg-shells. Sometimes one egg-shell only is employed, sometimes two--a dozen--or an indefinite number. At seaside places, like Normandy and the Channel Islands, egg-shells are sometimes replaced by shells of shell-fish. [w] In all the stories the end is the same, namely, to excite the curiosity and wonder of the imp to such a pitch that he gives expression to it in language akin to that of the North German or the Danish tale just quoted. The measure of age given in his exclamation is usually that of the trees in the forest, or indeed the forest itself. In the instance from Mecklenburg, Bohemian gold (Bôhmer Gold) is made the measure, and this runs through quite a number of Low Dutch stories. There can be little doubt, however, that it is a corruption, and that the true form is, as given in a Schleswig-Holstein tale, Bohemian Forest (Behmer Woelt). [x] In Hesse Wester Forest (Westerwald) is found, and so on in other countries, the narrator in each case referring to some wood well known to his audience. The Lithuanian elf, or laumes, says: "I am so old, I was already in the world before the Kamschtschen Wood was planted, wherein great trees grew, and that is now laid waste again; but anything so wonderful I have never seen." In Normandy the changeling declares: "I have seen the Forest of Ardennes burnt seven times, but I never saw so many pots boil." The astonishment of a Scandinavian imp expressed itself even more graphically, for when he saw an egg-shell boiling on the fire having one end of a measuring rod set in it, he crept out of the cradle on his hands, leaving his feet still inside, and stretched himself out longer and longer until he reached, right across the floor and up the chimney, when he exclaimed "Well! seven times have I seen the wood fall in Lessö Forest, but never till now have I seen so big a ladle in so small a pot!" And the Danish story I have cited above represents the child as saying that he has seen a young wood thrice upon Tiis Lake. [y] The Welsh fairies are curiously youthful compared with these hoary infants, which is all the more remarkable when the daring exaggerations of Cambrian story-tellers are considered. It is a modest claim only to have seen the acorn before the oak and the egg before the hen, yet that is all that is put forward. In one of the Lays of Marie de France the wood of Brézal is indicated as the spot where the oak was seen. [z] The formula thus variously used would appear to be a common one to describe great antiquity, and in all probability itself dates back to a very remote period.
But changelings frequently conform to the more civilized usage of measuring their age by years. And various are the estimates given us, from fifteen hundred years in the Emerald Isle down to the computation, erring perhaps on the other side, of the young gentleman in the English tale, who remarks: "Seven years old was I before I came to the nurse, and four years have I lived since, and never saw so many milk-pans before." A yet more mysterious hint as to her earlier life is dropped by an imp in Brittany. She has been treated to the sight of milk boiling in egg-shells, and cries "I shall soon be a hundred years old, but I never saw so many shells boiling! I was born in Pif and in Paf, in the country where cats are made; but I never saw anything like it! " [aa] To all right-minded persons this disclosure contained sufficient warrant for her reputed mother to repudiate her as a witch, though cats are no less intimate with fairies than with conjurers.
Simrock, in his work on German mythology already cited, inclines to the opinion that the object of the ceremony which the suspected child is made to witness is to produce laughter. He says: "The dwarf is no over-ripe beauty who must keep her age secret. Rather something ridiculous must be done to cause him to laugh, because laughter brings deliverance." [ab] The problem set before the heroes of many folk-tales is to compel laughter, but that does not seem to be intended in these changeling stories. At least I have only met with it in one, and it certainly is not common. The confession of age which the ceremony draws forth is really much more. It is a confession that the apparently human babe is an imposture, that it belongs in fact to a different race, and has no claim on the mother's care and tenderness. Therefore it is not always enough for the fraud to be discovered: active means must sometimes be taken to rid the family of their supernatural burden and regain their own little one. In Grimm's story, in which the chila laughs, a host of elves comes suddenly bringing back the true and carrying away the false one; and in many of the German and Northern tales the changeling disappears in one way or other immediately after its exclamation. We are sometimes even told in so many words that the changeling had betrayed himself and the underground folk were obliged to give beck the stolen child. And in the Lithuanian story we have cited the laumes straightway falls sick and dies. [ac] Such conduct accords entirely with the resentment at being recognized which we have in a previous chapter found to be a characteristic of spiritual existences. It is much more like the dislike of being found out attributed to beings who are in the habit of walking invisible, than any mystical effect of laughter.
If this be so, still less do the stories where it is required actually to drive the imp away support the learned German's contention. The means taken in these stories are very various. Sometimes it is enough to let the child severely alone, as once in the Isle of Man where a 'Woman laid her child down in the field while she was Cutting corn, and a fairy changed it there and then.
Frightful as this cruelty would seem to every one if perpetrated on the mother's own offspring, it was regarded with equanimity as applied to a goblin; and it is not more frightful than what has been actually perpetrated on young children, and that within a very few years, under the belief that they were beings of a different race. Instances need not be multiplied; it will be enough to show that one of the horrible methods of disposing of changelings referred to in the last paragraph came under judicial notice no longer ago than the month of May 1884. Two women were reported in the "Daily Telegraph" as having been arrested at Clonmel on the 17th of that month, charged with cruelly ill-treating a child three years old. The evidence given was to the effect that the neighbours fancied that the child, who had not the use of his limbs, was a changeling. During the mother's absence the prisoners accordingly entered her house and placed the child naked on a hot shovel, "under the impression that this would break the charm." As might have been expected the poor little thing was severely burnt, and, when the women were apprehended, it was in a precarious condition. The prisoners, on being remanded, were hooted by an indignant crowd. It might be thought that this was an indication of the decay of superstition, even in Ireland, however much to be condemned as an outburst of feeling against unconvicted and even untried persons. But we must regard it rather as a protest against the prisoners inhumanity than against their superstition: in either case, of course, the product of advancing civilization. For if we may trust the witness of other sagas we find the trial by fire commuted to a symbolic act, as though men had begun to be revolted by the cruelty, even when committed only on a fairy who had been found out, but were unwilling to abandon their belief in the power of the exorcism. In the north-east of Scotland, for example, where a beggar, who had diagnosed a changeling, was allowed to try his hand at disposing of it, he made a large fire on the hearth and held a black hen over it till she struggled, and finally escaped from his grasp, flying out by the "lum." More minute directions are given by the cunning man in a Glamorganshire tale. After poring over his big book, he told his distracted client to find a black hen without a single feather of any other colour. This she was to bake (not living, but dead, as appears by the sequel) before a fire of wood (not, as usual, of peat), with feathers and all intact. Every window and opening was to be closed, except one--presumably the chimney; and she was not to watch the crimbil, or changeling, until the hen had been done enough, which she would know by the falling off of all her feathers. The more knowing woman, in an Irish story, attributes the fact of the infant's being changed to the Evil Eye; and her directions for treatment require the mother to watch for the woman who has given it the Evil Eye, inveigle her into the house and cut a piece secretly out of her cloak. This piece of the cloak was then to be burnt close to the child until the smoke made him sneeze, when the spell would be broken and her own child restored. The writer who records this tale mentions the following mode of proceeding as a common one, namely: to place the babe in the middle of the cabin and light a fire round it, fully expecting it to be changed into a sod of turf, but manifestly not intending to do bodily harm to it independently of any such change. In Carnarvonshire a clergyman is credited with telling' a mother to cover a shovel with salt, mark a cross in the salt, and burn it in the chamber where the child was, judiciously opening the window first. [ah] It is satisfactory to know that, so far as the recorded cases go, the ceremony lost nothing of its power by being thus toned down.
These verses carry us back to the egg-shell episode, from which the consideration of the means adopted to drive away the intrusive goblin has diverted us. They contain a vague assertion of age like those then before us, but not a hint of laughter. Nor have we found anything throughout the whole discussion to favour Simrock's suggestion, or to shake the opinion that the dissolution of the fairy spell was derived either from the vexation of the supernatural folk at their own self-betrayal, or from the disclosure to the human foster-parents of the true state of the facts, and their consequent determination to exorcise the demon.
It is true we have a few more stories to examine, but we shall find that they all confirm this conclusion. The cases we have yet to deal with, except the first, exhibit a different and much more humane treatment of the changeling than the foregoing. The case excepted is found in Caernarvonshire, where one infallible method of getting rid of the child was to place it on the floor and let all present in the house throw a piece of iron at it. The old woman who mentioned this to Professor Rhys conjectured that the object was to convince the Tylwyth Teg, or fairy people, of the intention to kill the babe, in order to induce them to bring the right child back. [al] This would be the same motive as that which threatened death by fire or other ill-usage, in some of the instances mentioned above. But we could not thus account for the requirement that iron, and only iron, was to be used; and here we have, in fact, a superstition carefully preserved, while its meaning has quite passed out of memory. In a future chapter we shall examine the attitude of mythical beings in folk-lore to metals, and especially to iron; in the meantime we may content ourselves with noting this addition to the examples we have already met with of the horror with which they regarded it.
But it was not always necessary to incur the risk of going as far as the other world. The Glamorganshire woman, whose successful cooking of a black hen has been already referred to, had first to go at full moon to a place where four roads met, and hide herself to watch the fairy procession which passed at midnight. There in the midst of the music and the Bendith eu mammau she beheld her own dear little child. One of the most interesting changeling stories was gravely related in the "Irish Fireside" for the 7th of January 1884,concerning a land-leaguer who had been imprisoned as a suspect under the then latest Coercion Act. When this patriot was a boy he had been stolen by the fairies, one of themselves having been left in his place The parish priest, however, interfered; and by a miracle he caused the elf for a moment to disappear, and the boy to return to tell him the conditions on which his captivity might be ended. The information given, the goblin again replaced the true son; but the good priest was now able to deal effectually with the matter. The imp was accordingly dipped thrice in Lough Lane (a small lake in the eastern part of Westmeath), when "a curl came on the water, and up from the deep came the naked form of the boy, who walked on the water to meet his father on shore. The father wrapped his overcoat about his son, and commenced his homeward march, accompanied by a line of soldiers, who also came out of the lake. The boy's mother was enjoined not to speak until the rescuing party would reach home. She accidentally spoke; and immediately the son dropped a tear, and forced himself out of his father's arms, piteously exclaiming: 'Father, father, my mother spoke! You cannot keep me. I must go.' He disappeared, and, reaching home, the father found the sprite again on the hearth." The ghostly father's services were called into requisition a second time; and better luck awaited an effort under his direction after the performance of a second miracle like the first. For this time the mother succeeded in holding her tongue, notwithstanding that at every stream on the way home from the lake the car on which the boy was carried was upset, and he himself fainted. [ao] This is declared to have happened no longer ago than the year 1869. The writer, apparently a pious Roman Catholic, who vouches for the fact, probably never heard the touching tale of Orpheus and Eurydice.
Absurd and indecent it would undoubtedly have been to unearth a dead body in the expectation of any such result; but it would have been entirely in harmony with current superstition. The stories and beliefs examined in the present chapter prove that there has been no superstition too gross, or too cruel, to survive into the midst of the civilization of the nineteenth century; and the exhumation of a corpse, of the two, is less barbarous than the torture by fire of an innocent child. The flight; struggles, and transformation of a bespelled lady are found both in marchen and saga: some examples of the latter will come under our notice in a future chapter.
[a] The belief in changelings is not confined to Europe, though the accounts we have of It elsewhere are meagre. It is found, as we shall see further on, in China. It is found also among the natives of the Pacific slopes of North America, where it is death to the mother to suckle the changeling. Dorman, p. 24, citing Bancroft.
[b] See a curious Scottish ballad given at length, "F. L. Record," vol. i. p. 235; Henderson, p. 55; "Cymru Fu N. and Q." vol. ii. p 144; Gregor, p. 11 (cf. Harland and Wilkinson, p. 225); Cromek, p. 247. See Webster, p. 73, where a witch carries away a child who is not blessed when it sneezes.
[c] Napier, p. 40; "F. L. Journal," vol. i. p. 56; Kuhn, pp. 365, 196; Knoop, p. 155; "Zeits. f. Volksk." vol. ii. p. 33; Kennedy, p. 95; Carnoy, p. 4; "F. L. Journal," vol. ii. p. 257.
[d] Bartsch, vol. i. pp. 64, 89; vol. ii. p. 43; Kuhn, p. 195; Knoop, loc. cit.; Jahn, pp. 52, 71; Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 174; "Zeits. f. Volksk." vol. ii. loc. cit. W. Map, Dist. ii. c. 14; Brand, vol. ii. p. 8, note; Lady Wilde, vol. i. pp. 75, 73; Schleicher, p.93; Tertullian, "Adv. Nationes," l. ii. c. ii; Brand, vol. ii. p. 334 note, quoting Martin," History of the Western Islands"; Train, vol. ii. p. 132; "Sacred Books of the East," vol. xxiv. p. 277. As to the use of fire in China, see" F. L. Journal," vol. v. p. 225; and generally as to the efficacy of fire in driving off evil spirits see Tylor, vol. ii. p. 177.
[e] Grimm, "Teut. Myth." p. 468; Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 2, vol. iii. P. 45; Train, vol. ii. p. 133; Garnett, pp. 235, 355; "F. L. Journal," vol. v. p. 225. In Eastern Prussia a steel used for striking a light, a hammer, or anything else that will strike fire, is used. This seems to combine the dread of steel with that of fire (Lemke, P. 41).
[f] Grimm, "Teut. Myth." loc. cit.; Train, vol. ii. loc. cit.; Henderson, p. 14; "F. L. Journal," vol. v. p. 224; "Zeits. f. Volksk." vol. ii. p. 33; "N. and Q." 7th ser. vol. x. p. 185.
[g] Henderson, loc. cit.; Bartsch, vol. ii. p. 192; Pitré, vol. xv. pp. 154 note, 555; vol. xvii. p. 102, quoting Castelli, "Credenze ed usi"; Horace, "Ep. ad Pison," v. 340; Dorsa, p. 146; Wright, "Middle Ages," vol. i. p. 290; Garnett, p. 70; "Mélusine," vol. v. p. 90, quoting English authorities. Map, Dist. ii. c. 54, gives a story of babies killed by a witch. St. Augustine records that the god Silvanus was feared as likely to injure women in childbed, and that for their protection three men were employed to go round the house during the night and to strike the threshold with a hatchet and a pestle and sweep it with a brush; and he makes merry over the superstition (" De Civ. Dei,"l. vi. c. 9).
[h] Pitré, vol. xii. p. 304, note; vol, xv. p. 154; "F. L. Españ." vol. ii. p. 51; De Gubernatis, " Usi Natal." p. 219, quoting Bézoles, "Le Baptême."
[i] Bartsch, vol. 1. p. 46; Jahn, p.89; Grimm, "Teut. Myth." p. 468; Simrock, p. 418.
[j] There is another motive for the robbery of a human creature, mentioned only, I think, in the Romance of Thomas the Rhymer, namely, that at certain seasons the foul fiend fetches his fee, or tribute of a living soul, from among the underground folk. Several difficulties arise upon this; but it is needless to discuss them until the motive in question be found imputed elsewhere than in a literary work of the fifteenth century, and ballads derived there from.
Since the foregoing note was written my attention has been drawn to the following statement in Lady Wilde, vol. i. p. 70: "Sometimes it is said the fairies carry off the mortal child for a sacrifice, as they have to offer one every seven years to the devil in return for the power he gives them. And beautiful young girls are carried off, also, either for sacrifice or to be wedded to the fairy king." It is easier to generalize in this manner than to produce documents in proof. And I think I am expressing the opinion of all folklore students when I say that, with all respect for Lady Wilde, I would rather not lay any stress upon her general statements. Indeed, those of anybody, however great an authority, need to be checked by the evidence of particular instances. I await such evidence.
[k] Sikes, p. 62; cf. Brand, vol. ii. p. 334 note; Bartsch, vol. i. p. 46.
[l] Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 175; vol. iii. p. 43; Kuhn, p. 195; Schleicher, p. 92.
[m] Gregor, p. 61; Keightley, p. 393; Campbell, vol. ii. p. 64.
[n] Hunt, p. g6; Waldron, p. 30. This account was given to the author by the mother herself.
[o] Croker, p. 81. See a similar tale in Campbell, vol. ii. P. 58. Gregor, p. 61, mentions the dog-hole as the way by which children are sometimes carried off.
[p] Bartsch, vol. i. p. 46; Kuhn, p. 196; Grimm, "Tent. Myth." p. 468; Poestion, p. 114; Grohmann, p. 153.
[q] Waldron, p. 29. The same writer gives a similar account of the changeling mentioned above.
[r] "Colloquia Mensalia," quoted by Southey, "The Doctor" (London, 1842), p. 621. As to the attribute of greed, cf. Keightley, p. 125.
[s] Hunt, p.85; "Y Cymmroclor," vol. vi. p. 575; Rev. Edmund Jones, "A Relation of Apparitions," quoted by Wirt Sikes, p. 56. Thiele relates a story in which a wild stallion colt is brought in to smell two babes, one of which is a changeling. Every time he smells one he is quiet and licks it; but on smelling the other he is invariably restive and strives to kick it. The latter, therefore, is the changeling. (Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 177.) Sir John Maundeville also states that in Sicily is a kind of serpent whereby men assay the legitimacy of their children. If the children be illegitimate the serpents 'bite and kill them; if otherwise they do them no harm--an easy and off-hand way of getting rid of them! (" Early Trav." p. 155).
[t] Campbell, vol. ii. p. 58; Chambers, p. 70.
[v] Bartsch, vol. i. p. 42; Sikes, p. 59, quoting from the "Cambrian Quarterly," vol. ii. p. 86; "Y Cymmrodor," vol. vi. p. 209; Arnason's "Icelandic Legends," cited in Kennedy, p. 89; Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 574, quoting Thiele, ' Danmark's Folkesagn sanilede." See also Keightley, p. 125.
[x] cf. Böhmen-Gold, Bartsch, vol. i. p. 22; Böhmegold, ibid. p. 47; Böhmer Gold, ibid. .pp. 65, 79, and presumably p. 89; Böhma gold, Kuhn und Schwartz, p. 30; Böhman gold, ibid. p. 31; böm un gold (timber and gold), ibid. p. 105; Boem un holt (timber and wood), Jahn, p. 90 Bernholt in den Walt (firewood in the forest), and Bremer Wold, Müllenhoff, cited Grimm, "Tales," vol. i. p. 388. These variations while preserving a similar sound are suspicious.
[y] Grimm, "Tales," vol. i. pp. 163, 388; Schleicher, p. 91; Fleury, p. 60; Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 176; quoting Asbjörnsen, "Huldreeventyr,' vol. ii. p. 165. Cf. Sébillot, "Contes Pop." vol ii. p. 78.
[z] Sikes, pp. 58, 59; Howells, p. 138; "Y Cymmrodor," vol. iv. p. 208, vol. vi. pp. 572, 204; Keightley, p. 436.
[aa] Croker, p. 65; "A Pleasant Treatise of Witches," p. 62, quoted in Hazlitt, "Fairy Tales," p. 372; Sébillot, "Contes," vol. ii, p. 76; Carnoy, p. 4; Thorpe, vol. iii. p. 157; Campbell, vol. ii. p. 47; "Revue des Trad. Pop." vol. iii. p. 162. Cf. a Basque tale given by Webster, where the Devil is tricked into telling his age (Webster, p.58).
[ac] Jahn, p. 89; Schleicher, p. 91.
[ad] "Choice Notes,' p. 27; this seems to have been a common prescription in Wales: see " Y Cymmrodor,' vol. vi. pp. 175, 178; and in the Western Highands: see Campbell, vol. ii. p. 64.) Brand, vol. ii. p. 335, note; (this seems also to be the case in some parts of Ireland, Lady Wilde, vol. i. p. 70.) Thorpe, vol. iii. p. 157; Kennedy, p. 94; "Irish Folk Lore," p. 45.
[ae] Beaten--Lay of Marie de France, quoted Keightley, p. 436; Costello, "Pilgrimage to Auvergne," vol. ii. p. 294, quoted Keightley, p. 471; Fleury, p. 62, citing Bosquet, "Normandie Romanesque"; Howells, p. 139; Aubrey, "Remains," p. 30; Jahn, pp. 98, 101; Kuhn und Schwartz, p. 29; Croker, p. 81. Starved, beaten, &c.- Croker, p. 77. Threatened to be killed--Sébillot, "Trad. et Super." vol. i. p. 118; "Contes," vol. i. p. 28, vol. ii. p. 76; Carnoy, p. 4.
[af] Grohmann, p. 135; Wratislaw, p. 161; Schleicher, p. 92.
[ag] "Y Brython," vol ii. p. 20; Kennedy, p. 90; Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 174; Napier, p. 40; Lady Wilde, vol. i pp. 72, 171; Keightley, p. 393; "Revue des Trad. Pop." vol. iii. p. 162; Campbell, vol. ii. pp. 47, 61; Croker, p. 65; Chambers, p. 70; "F. L. Journal," vol. i. p. 56; Gregor, pp. 8, 9; Cromek, p. 246.
[ah] "Daily Telegraph," 19 May 1884; Gregor, p. 61; Lady Wilde, vol. i. pp. 38, 173; "Y Cymmrodor," vol. vi. p. 209, vol. v. p. 72.
[ai] "Cambrian Quarterly," vol. ii. p. 86, quoted, Sikes, p. 59 "Y Cymmrodor," vol. iv. p. 208, vol. vi. pp. 172, 203. Mr. Sikes refers to a case in which the child was bathed in a solution of foxglove as having actually occurred in Caernarvonshire in 1857, but he gives no authority.
[aj] Quoted in Southey, loc. cit. Müllenhoff relates a similar tale, see Thorpe, vol. iii. p. 46; also Grohmann, p. 126; Kuhn und Schwartz, p. 30. Bowker, p. 73, relates a story embodying a similar episode, but apparently connected with Wild Hunt legends. See his note, ibid. p.251.
[ak] Hunt, p. 91; "F. L. Journal," vol. vi. p. 182.
[al] "Y. Cymmrodor," vol. vi. p. 181.
[am] Mrs. Bray, vol. i. p. 167; Kuhn, p. 196; Grimm, "Teut. Myth." p. 468, note; "Irish F. L." p. 45; Napier, p. 42.
[an] Jahn, p. 52; Campbell, vol. ii. p. 47 Lady Wilde, vol. i. p. 119.
[ao] "F. L. Journal," vol. ii. p. 91, quoting the "Irish Fireside."
[ap] Gregor, p. 62; Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 539, quoting Thiele; vol, iii. P. 41, quoting Mullenhoff; Campbell, vol. ii. p. 67; Cromek, p. 244.
[aq] Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 133, quoting Thiele; Keightley, p. 391, quoting Stewart, "The Popular Superstitions of the Highlanders."
[ar] Napier, p. 41; Lord A. Campbell, "Waifs and Strays," p. 71; "Border Minstrelsy," vol. ii. p. 173.

References: v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v.