Changelings

Those few people who are regular readers of this blog know of my (slight) obsession with mythology/folk-lore/fairy-tales, etc. It's not something I try to hide; it's just an aspect of my personality that I don't always showcase. But I'm digressing. One of the most common stories (and one of my personal favorites), is that of the changeling. The changeling, depending on where the story comes from, is either Troll or Fairy or Fae, and is left in place of a human child, usually while the mother is either asleep or has her back turned. Why the child has been stolen also depends on who is telling the story. According to some, they thought the human child was pretty. Others say that they wanted their children to be raised as human for a better life. Many however, believe that the Fae desired human children as teinds, or tithes, who were sacrificed every seven years. But generally, that doesn't matter, because the story focuses on the concerned parents of the child. Almost always, they realize that something is wrong with their child, and they seek the advice of a priest or an old woman. (Why are wise women always old?) The sage tells the parents that they should try to boil water in eggshells (or brew beer in an acorn) in front of the child. If the child is a changeling, they will laugh and question the odd behavior. If the child is not a changeling, they will continue to lie there like the boring (but oh so adorable) baby they are. Once the parents know that their baby is a changeling, they abandon it in a field, so that the Fae parents will want to switch it back. And that's where the story always ends. But that ending always struck me as rather hollow. I always wondered what happened to the changeling, and what happened to human child while it was in the land of Fae. And then I found "The Stolen Child." (Yes, this entire post was just an excuse for me to post this.)
"The Stolen Child" by W.B. Yeats

WHERE dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berrys
And of reddest stolen cherries.
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.
Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim gray sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And anxious in its sleep.
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.
Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scare could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
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.

Daydreams of the Ugly Duckling

I saw the movie Enchanted today. It was cute, and I was amused by it, even though all of my friends that have seen it thought it was idiotic. (I'm immature, what can I say?) But because the movie was all about fairy tales, it unearthed the part of me that's still 6 years old. I grew up with beautiful books and stories, but from a young age, I always preferred fairy tales. Not just the Disney ones, although of course I grew up watching Snow White, Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and many, many others, countless times, (my favorite movie with a "princess" in it was Beauty and the Beast: Belle loved to read and she was a brunette; for a 5 year old that's a huge deal), but also the real fairy tales: the (somewhat) unsanitized tales of princes that fight gigantic ogres with terrifyingly bad breath, the beautiful princesses who were sometimes in league with witches and demons, the youngest sons of farmers or woodcutters who were somehow the bravest and the strongest and the kindest in the land who always win in the end, the mythical creatures in the equally mythical and mysterious, dangerous, dark forests, and the entire magical world. I adored fairy tales. I read everyone I could find. The library of my elementary school, had the entire collection of Andrew Lang's Fairy Books (The Blue Book, The Red Book, The Green Book, The Yellow Book, the Violet Book, The Chartruese Book, The Salmon Book, etc. ...) and I read all of them at least two times. (I also read and reread and reread and reread Hans Christian Anderson and the children's version of the Brother's Grimm.) Back then (and, alright, now) fairy tales were my only means of escape from a cruel and inhospitible world, and they very quickly became my reality. There are no divorces in fairy tales. Young girls who have sad and lonely childhoods grow up to be the most beautiful women in the world, whom everyone adores. The ugly duckling always becomes the swan. She has to; that's the way it's written. I began to see the world in terms of good and evil, with the strictest ethics that I learned from my books. But at the same time, they taught me that even the lowliest was capable of the greatest good; that even I was capable of good. Fairy tales have their own view of justice: the evil die or are horribly punished, while the good get their happily-ever-afters. I saw that in my books, and I dreamed that it would somehow get applied to the real world. I guess I still do. But more so then the justice, and the safety, I retreated into stories for the wonders they possessed. In fairy tales, the mundane and supernatural walk together like twin brothers. And just like twins, sometimes you don't know which is which. The supernatural becomes mundane and the mundane becomes something supernatural. In fairy tales wonderful, beautiful, magical, miraculous events take place every day. I don't regret my reclusion into fantasy; it gave me so much more that reality never could. It awakened in me a great sense of wonder, for somewhere, everywhere, there was something fantastic happening, even if I couldn't see it. They made me search my back yard and the nearby park for leprechauns. Fairy tales allowed me to see the magic that I desperately needed; and they taught me to cherish every living thing, for life has a magic of its own, far more powerful than any spell. They made me into the idiotically optimistic person I am today. For a time I recanted my beliefs in fairy tales: those years were the hardest and saddest in my life. I've grown older and become this strange girl-woman hybrid, and now I can see the beauty and the truth in my old daydreams. Crutch for reality they may be, but fairy tales only add hope, wonder and magic to this world: things we need more than we know.
"Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed. "-G.K. Chesterton
Kathleen, the (ex?) Disney Princess