Sex bias in faery sightings

Illustration by Freda Mabel Rose

The latest edition of the Fairy Investigation Society newsletter included an article by Malcolm Smith on the ‘Sex Ratio of Fairies’ (issue 18, June 2023, pages 58-66; Malcolm is author of Apparitions: tulpas, ghosts, fairies, and even stranger things). He was prompted to write having noticed that, in Ron Quinn’s 2006 book, Little People, the writer had remarked that “nearly all the ‘little people’ were male. ‘Where are all the
little women?’ he asked.”

Malcolm decided to carry out his own analysis of selected data on faery sightings, which included some 1930s experiences published in John o’ London’s Weekly in 1936, Michael Swords’ LEPRECAT (the online ‘leprechaun catalogue’) and the 2014-17 Fairy Census. Studying the LEPRECAT, he found the following breakdown of faeries encountered:

• Solitary fairies: 49 males, 8 females, 5 of unknown sex; and,
• Groups of fairies: 33 male groups, 0 female groups, 9 groups of mixed sex and 29 of unknown sex.

As Malcolm said of these results, “the bias towards males is obvious.” He also considered the sex of the witnesses, to see if that might have had any influence on what they saw- he felt that it didn’t:

• Male witnesses, who saw 42 male individuals or groups, 6 mixed groups, 15 unknown; and,
• Female witnesses, who saw 31 males, 6 females, 3 mixed groups, 11 unknown.

The bias towards seeing male faeries emerges again, although I’d say as well that men seemed slightly more prone to seeing male faeries than women were.

Malcolm then turned to the large body of material found in the Fairy Census. He again found a bias towards seeing or meeting male faes:

• Solitary fairies: 69 males, 55 females, 60 of unknown sex; and,
• Groups of fairies: 18 male groups, 6 female, 12 mixed and 62 groups of unknown sex.

However, he felt that this time the sex of the witnesses appeared to have a more distinct impact on what they experienced- hence:

• Male witnesses saw 35 male individuals or groups, 13 females, 5 mixed, and 39 unknown; and,
• Female witnesses saw 50 male individuals or groups, 48 females, 7 mixed, and 82 unknown.

Malcolm judged that the females reporting experiences to the Census “were just a fraction over twice as likely to report seeing fairies as men.” He went on to put forward some speculations for these perceived differences, but concludes his article with a provocative but highly intriguing question: “why do immaterial beings from some parallel reality need two sexes anyway?” My stance is that we have to accept that there are different sexes in Faery: all the evidence indicates that and sexuality is, in fact, one of the notable features of faery beings, whether we’re talking about elves or merfolk.

Hester Margetson, Fairy Snowdrop

Reading this article reminded me that I had attempted similar analyses of data myself four or more years ago. I decided to go back to those figures to see what I’d been able to discover. I based my own calculations on reports included in Janet Bord’s Fairies, Marjorie Johnson’s Seeing Fairies, Conan Doyle’s The Coming of the Fairies and a couple of Geoffrey Hodson’s books. Combined, these sources gave me 227 cases. I later added an analysis of 256 reports from the Census. As it happened, it had occurred to me, too, to consider both the sex of the faery being encountered as well as the sex of the witness, although I didn’t attempt to see if the sex of the witness affected the sex of the being observed (and- to be honest- I couldn’t quite face going back through the hundreds of cases to try to assess this).

In analysing the reports, a total of over 660 cases, I found there to be a gender split amongst the faeries seen of 60% males and 40% females. This is a more even distribution than revealed by Malcolm Smith’s groups and calculations, although it still suggests there are more male faes about. The gender breakdown of the witnesses was interesting, as this was, overall, 67% female, and- even more fascinatingly- amongst children, girls formed three quarter of witnesses. This seems to tell us quite a lot about our own preconceptions and social pressures.

Malcolm Smith speculated that the faery world might be as prone to a sexual division of labour as the human, with women undertaking much of the domestic labour and consequently less likely to be at leisure to play sports or to wander around in broad daylight, at risk of being spotted by us mortals. It’s fair to say that faery women are often seen performing chores, washing in streams or- very frequently- coming to borrow flour or some cooking implement from a human home. Faery queens are sighted, but they naturally have servants to do all the drudgery for them. That said, humans are often abducted by the faes precisely for the purpose of being enslaved, freeing their captors from repetitive occupations and making it more likely, perhaps, that they would be seen abroad. Then again, the (male) brownies, hobs and boggarts who undertake human tasks are consciously creating the conditions in which they are most prone to be observed.

In fact, I think that these figures have something rather more informative to tell us about humans- and their relationships to Faery- than they do about the faes themselves. The predominance of female witnesses, especially children, surely reflects two factors: firstly, the evolution of attitudes to faeries over the last 150 years. The fae have become (by and large) the province of children and children’s literature and TV/ film entertainment; more specifically, they are a subject for little girls- for that matter, they are- in popular conception- little girls. Our ancestors before the Victorian era would have been baffled by this notion; the Good Folk might have been shorter in stature, but they weren’t childish and they weren’t especially good either.

The second factor shaping sightings follows from the first- if faeries are girly, then it’s not ‘manly’ to talk about them. ‘Proper men’ are interested in cars and sport, not in aery-faery fantasies. Once again, an eighteenth century farmer would have been puzzled by this: he would have known the danger of the faeries (stealing his corn and milk, blighting his live stock, threatening to abduct his wife and child) and he would have feared and respected them. They might have been mysterious and supernatural, but that made them no less real and dangerous to him. Men, in the past, seem to have had no hesitation talking about faery encounters- they would have been seen as valuable cautionary tales involving peril and excitement; today, many men would hesitate to admit to such an experience because it could be taken as a sign that they were frivolous, foolish or worse. Perhaps, indeed, the reason that the faeries whom men admit to seeing are predominantly described as being male is because this might make the incident seem more threatening or serious. By way of contrast, I suspect that a man who encountered one of the alarming black dog phenomena or some kind of scary ghost would be a good deal less reluctant to talk openly about it…

This leads to another issue raised by Malcolm Smith. He points out, not unfairly, that even our classification of the gender of faeries is very ‘human-centric’- it’s based on our own innate assumptions about standard markers of gender- beards, prettiness and so on. He notes that “the most reliable sightings appear to have been of the archetypical “gnome” variety, and these tend to be largely male.” As Smith recognises, this perpetuates our conventions that “an elf [is] a little man with a pointed cap and a fairy [is] a miniature woman in a filmy gown, with insect wings, and perhaps a wand.” There are two broader questions here: firstly, how much we are imposing our gender markers on a population that is humanoid, but not human, and, secondly, how much people might see what they expect to see. Brief glimpses of a supernatural being might be accommodated after the event to a more familiar image; recollections of encounters might subconsciously be shaped to fit those stereotypes.

I can’t answer all these questions definitively, but they may incline us to approach the reports with caution. Witnesses will always be self-selecting and their reports may be shaped by a range of unconscious forces they barely recognise.

Joyce Plumstead, Fairy Umbrellas

From Malekin to modern times- Multiple witness sightings of faeries

Sightings of faeries that involve multiple human witnesses are some of the most fascinating elements in the folklore record. By their nature, they make it harder for sceptics to dismiss or ignore the phenomena and, arguably, the bigger the groups having the experience, the more convincing it is.

I deliberately use ‘sighting’ rather than ‘encounter’ as- by far- these incidents tend to involve observations at a distance. The main exceptions to this tend to be old: the cases of the green children of Woolpit and the domestic spirit known as Malekin. In these two medieval cases numerous people over periods of months and years had contact with the faery beings. These cases in turn underline another aspect of the most commonly cited examples of multiple witness sightings- that they are usually one-off incidents, in which the faeries are seen at a specific time on a specific day (which is often recorded, more or less accurately). The two medieval cases and, their more modern equivalents- the accounts of domestic brownies, boggarts and hobs- all involve extended interactions over lengthy periods of time. These records ought to be as convincing as the sightings, but their lack of specificity (other than family and farmhouse or clan and castle) tend to reduce them to ‘stories’ rather than ‘reports.’

There are about half a dozen really famous multiple witness sightings. The first is the so-called Bodfari incident, from Denbighshire, which I have described before. Several of the other cases are also from Wales:

• A curious incident occurred at Bedwellty, Caerphilly, also in the eighteenth century.  A small group of people were in the meadows cutting hay when they saw a large flock of sheep on a hill about a quarter of a mile away.  This flock travelled further away from the watchers and then vanished.  Later the same day, a short while before sunset, the mysterious group appeared once again, but this time some of the reapers saw them as sheep, some saw greyhounds, some pigs and some naked children;
• on Midsummer’s Eve 1737, between 8 and 9pm, a Cumbrian gentleman and members of his family were fetched by a servant to see a vast mounted army parading on Souther Fell in the Northern Fells of the English Lake District. Subsequently, at Midsummer 1745, twenty six people saw carriages and horses on the Fell;
• in August 1862, two carters were passing through Carmarthenshire early one afternoon when they spotted some fifty small people on a hilltop not far from the road. At first the men mistook these figures for little haystacks, but then they saw them dancing in a circle before, apparently, spiralling down into the ground.  The group then reappeared and repeated this curious performance a second time;
• At an unknown date in the parishes of Pencarreg and Caio (also in Carmarthenshire and presumably also during the nineteenth century) the young men of the locality met to play at football. The two teams saw a large group of the fairies dancing a short distance away and, emboldened by their youth and their numbers, decided to try to catch the dancers. However, the faeries instantly moved to another place and, when the young men followed, the little folk simply vanished and reappeared at the first place. When the youths tried instead to surround them, the dancers made themselves invisible, and were never more seen dancing at that spot;
• bringing the examples into the last century, there are quite a number of group sightings recorded in Marjorie Johnson’s Seeing Fairies and in the more recent Fairy Census. We might also note a case recorded in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s book, The Coming of the Fairies (1922). Two respectable gentlemen walking together on the Dorset Downs saw about twenty very small children, holding hands and dancing round in a perfect circle. They stood watching them, but then in an instant they all vanished from sight. One of the pair of men, a local, said that they were fairies, and that they often came to that particular spot to hold their revels.

As I’ve noted before, the Souther fell incident might (in 1745, at least) be related to Jacobite rebellion which broke out under Prince Charles Stuart in mid-August the same year. Otherwise, it is less clear why humans are vouchsafed such glimpses of faery activity. At Bodfari, it appears not to have been intentional, given that the children were chased by an angry looking male, although the alternative explanation is that the display was laid on to lure them in (something for which the tylwyth teg are renowned) and the anger related to their escape rather than their presence. The football match certainly seems to have disturbed the fae, hence their efforts to avoid the humans but to carry on what they had been doing.

In the other cases, the distance between human witnesses and faery company was apparently larger than at Bodfari, so that contact or taking doesn’t seem likely to have been planned. Perhaps in the other two Welsh cases, as (possibly) in the second Lake District appearance, the plan was to convey a message of some sort. We don’t know- other than to observe that none of the human observers learned anything to their advantage, other than to recall that they had glimpsed a supernatural scene. Perhaps that was enough: we’re still citing these cases up to two hundred years later, precisely because they did make an impression on the witnesses. What’s more, as Neil Rushton has written “Experiences of faerie encounters become much more difficult to explain away as hallucinations or as a vagary of perception or memory when there is a plurality of perception.” This is the unchallengeable problem that such incidents present and Neil went on to suggest that “If faerie entities are able to present themselves to two or more people at the same moment, it suggests they are indeed existing in a stand-alone reality, and are able to interact with humans (and perhaps animals) in our physical reality whenever certain conditions are met.” It’s plainly much harder to argue that all members of a large group of individuals are lying or were simultaneously hallucinating if they all report in identical terms on an incident. Equally, thinking of the Bedwellty case, if some friends had wanted to play a trick on their neighbours and make up a story about a faery sighting, you think they would have at least agreed what exactly they say. To me, their different perceptions are not flaws in their testimonies but rather convincing circumstantial differences.

Leprechauns, sidhe & brownies- some thoughts on national faeries

A Leprechaun

In the most recent issue of the Fairy Investigation Society newsletter (no.18, June 2023), editor Simon Young interviewed the Romanian writer and teacher Daniela Simina (author of Where Fairies Meet: Parallels between Irish and Romanian Fairy Traditions [2023] and of the forthcoming A Fairy Path: The Memoir of a Young Fairy Seer in Training). On the subject of her first book, she said this:

“I believe that fairies, cross-culturally, share a relatively broad common denominator. This common denominator may lead people to believing that fairies are the same everywhere, that the same type of being is present in all cultures, only taking on minor variations that are reflective of the culture itself. I personally don’t believe this to be accurate. Even if Romanian and Irish fairies, zâne and sidhe, have similar physical descriptions, they are clearly different beings.”

Simina expresses very well a conviction that I share. It seems only obvious to me that different countries’ faeries cannot be assumed to be identical, or interchangeable. I have said this previously, but I think it’s worthwhile once again contesting the idea of a single faery type, the common denominator that Simina speaks about. A short reflection will, I think, only confirm this. The geography, climate and topography of every nation are different, leading to different physical conditions within which a faery population must evolve. On top of those powerful shaping forces, there are, too, the influences of the culture of the humans alongside whom the faeries live as neighbours. Our use of the land, our belief structures, our social conditions, dwellings, even language, will all have a further role in fashioning how and where we encounter faeries and the preconditions and expectations with which we approach such encounters. Doubtless, too, the Good Neighbours bring their own locally specific ideas, needs and practices to the encounters, so that each side actively forms and impacts upon the interaction. This is why I’ve argued for the faeries being seen as true ‘spirits of the land.’

The Romanian zâne are not the same the Irish sidhe: 3000 kilometres, nearly two thousand miles, separate the two countries; many thousands of years separate their common roots in the earliest Indo-European culture, and innumerable different influences have impacted upon them in the interim. It would be unreasonable to expect close parallels. But even between Ireland and Britain, the differences of geography, culture and history are still different enough to mean that we should hold the sidhe firmly apart from the pixies, faeries, tylwyth teg, the brownies, boggarts and, even, the sith of the Scottish Highlands. Indeed, even within the island of Britain, there are distinct differences between the character and habits of, say, the pixies of South Western England and the trows of Orkney and Shetland or, even, the brownies of Sussex and the broonies of the Scottish border regions.

British & Irish faeries compared

These regional differences are yet more accentuated if we turn to Ireland and contrast it to Britain. There are, of course, similarities- these are neighbouring islands which have communicated over millennia- so that there are numerous ways in which Irish and British faeries resemble each other. For reasons of accessibility for readers, I shall mainly draw my examples from Walter Evans Wentz’ Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries and Thomas Keightley’s Fairy Mythology (both available free online).

Amongst the two faery nation’s common shared traits are: a love of music (Evans Wentz 32, 40, 47, 57 & 71); the enjoyment of communal rides together; an aversion to iron (Evans Wentz 39) but a liking for dairy products (Evans Wentz 37 & 43); an inability to cross flowing water (Evans Wentz 38) but a habit of travelling in small whirlwinds, which are often used to kidnap people as well (Evans Wentz 76; Keightley 363); a preference for dwelling in ancient sites or in hills. In addition, similar incidents are recounted about the two separate populations- such as midwives who accidentally gain the second sight and are blinded for it (Evans Wentz 54) or changelings who are substituted for human babies and are caught out by brewing in eggshells (Evans Wentz 58; Keightley 365). Both Irish and British faeries feel that they are entitled to a share of human food, but theirs is dangerous for humans to eat (Evans Wentz 44, 70, 47 & 68).

In these and other ways, there are strong parallels between the two faery tribes. People react to them in just the same ways too- displaying curiosity tempered by caution, if not fear. As a demonstration of this, in Ireland as in Britain, the faeries are referred to by euphemisms– very often being talked of as ‘the gentry’- or just ‘them’- but also being called ‘the good, kind or little people’ or ‘the gentle folk.’ This precaution is especially necessary because of the sidhe habit of listening in to human conversations (as also happens in Wales).

The Irishness of the Irish fae

For all these similarities, though, there are some fundamental differences between the Irish and British faeries which must require us not to confuse or mix them together. The Irish faeries are “peculiarly” Irish and indigenous, a product of their own island (Evans Wentz 28 & 30).

So, for example, whilst the Irish faeries are linked to thorn trees, just as British faeries are, the association is much stronger in Ireland, and interference with thorns can be fatal (Evans Wentz 33 & 277). Generally, the Irish sidhe seem much more violent and warlike than British faeries, often being seen armed or fighting (Evans Wentz 39, 46, 50, 57; Keightley 366-367). The Irish faeries’ manner of ‘taking’ humans is very distinctive as well, involving dreams, trances, possession, sickness and, frequently, death. The overlap between- or identity of- faeries with dead people is much more clearly expressed in Ireland than in Britain, so that a man who was killed for getting in the way of a faery procession was said to have been ‘taken’ by them (Evans Wentz 33). Trances or possessions can last for long periods, too- from just a few days up to a couple of decades (Evans Wentz 34, 39, 43).

Irish changelings may be elderly, ill faeries who are swapped for healthy humans and soon die in our world (Evans Wentz 37). Some of those killed by the faeries later act as helpers and advisers to human mediums (Evans Wentz 53 & 55; Keightley 365)- or those who have been in a coma may recover and find that they have acquired the second sight and knowledge of the faeries. Some children are ‘taken’ (killed) simply because they are good or pretty (Evans Wentz 69, 72-3; Keightley 363 & 365).

The Cluricaune

Irish Faery Families

The final, and most fundamental difference between Irish and British faeries is the types identified and their habits or organisation (Evans Wentz 52-53). A broad distinction is made between the solitary and the communal or ‘trooping’ faeries, who are often called the Daoine Sidhe (the mound people) or the Daoine Maithe (the good people). It is this second group that is seen riding in groups on horses, feasting or dancing and playing sports. Significantly, the Daoine Sidhe are seen as deriving from the ancient gods of Ireland, the Tuatha De Danann, a materially more noble pedigree than anything claimed by British faeries.

The solitary faeries comprise the well known leprechaun, the faery cobbler, and the cluricaune, who tends to live in the cellars of human houses, guarding the drink that’s stored there. What’s notable about both beings is the tradition that, if one can be caught, he will be obliged to surrender his purse/ crock of gold. To achieve this, though, the human captor must never take his/her eyes off the captive- but of course, this always happens. Thomas Keightley asserted that there are neither brownies nor boggarts in Ireland, but he also noted that (in one case in Cork at least) the cluricaune performed a similar domestic function to the brownie, even to the extent of ‘flitting’ with a family trying to escape him (Keightley 368-9).

Other solitary faeries are the Fir Darrig or Fir Dhearga, the red men, who are practical jokers, and the phouka, a puck-like being who normally appears as a horse and carries off people on terrifying rides at night. Sometimes the phouka can undertake chores like a brownie, or may act as a horse dealer.

There are a few other faery types, some of whom may be familiar to readers. There is the lunantishee, who guards thorn bushes, the banshee (the faery woman who foretells or mourns a death), the leanan sidhe (the female faery lover) and, lastly, the gean-cannah or ganconer, a sort of male faery lover. All of these are lone beings, although gean-cannah has also been seen in teams, playing hurling.

Finally, the human dead might almost be regarded as a separate faery tribe. Certain people, especially those who have died in certain ways (drowning or child birth) go to join the faery ranks (Evans Wentz 39-40, 56, 58, 68, 75 & 77).

Conclusions

It is especially in the unique faery types just described that we see the fundamental difference between Irish and British Faerie. Each set of tribes or nations has grown up within distinct geographical climatic and cultural environment and, whilst the habits shared alike are notable, these should not distract us from the key features that separate the two populations. As Dr Jenny Butler has written, “Fairy legends are interwoven into both the human and the natural landscape and Ireland’s fairy place names and folk memories of fairy encounters help to give a strong sense of place (Butler, ‘The sidhe and fairy forts,’ in Magical Folk, S. Young & C. Houlbrook, 2018, 95- also 107; Dr Butler’s chapter in the book also examines at length the relationship between the faeries and the dead- pages 97-99- and gives lots of detail of changelings- 102-105).

Lunantishee by Andy Paciorek

The British and Irish faeries are the genius loci of their respective islands, but they are each born of their unique local conditions and should be recognised as separate and different. It is neither respectful nor accurate to treat them as identical, or as being simply manifestations of some more general global faery race.

Shargs & Crimbils- changelings across the British Isles

A Changeling by Thomas Denmark

In a recent posting I argued that the terms used to denote faeries can be highly enlightening about aspects of their complex nature. Here I’ll examine some of the terms applied to changelings, which may also give us further information about their nature and the ways they have been perceived in human society.

Scottish shargies

In Scotland, the common term for a changeling child was sharg, scharge or shearg. It connoted a creature very much like that described in Wales: “a puny, stunted or weakly creature, an ill-thriving child.” Thus Robert Forbes in his Shop-Bill of 1754 (page 33) referred to a thin and undergrown person as a “Wary-draggle, an’ sharger elf.” In the same way, the accused Perth witch Isobel Haldane in 1623 was described at her trial as diagnosing one changeling brought to her for treatment: she saw “the bairne, said ‘it wes ane scharge taikin away,’ [and] tuke on hand to cure it.” The cure Isobel prescribed was as follows: “[the mother] askit help to hir bairne that wes ane scharge and scho send furth hir sone to gether fochsterrie leaweis quhairof scho directit the bairnes mother to mak a drink.” The mother had to gather foxglove leaves, whereof she made a drink for the infant. This possibly drastic cure (given the toxic nature of concentrated foxglove) was, like so much of the cruel or violent treatment inflicted on supposed changelings, intended to drive out the substitute faery and allow the human child to return.

The same ‘cure’ was still being used two hundred years later in the south of Scotland. A story was told in Teviotdale of a local woman whose child was taken by the local faeries. The church minister advised her to gather foxgloves, boil them, make the changeling child drink some of the resulting juice before placing the baby in a cot in the barn overnight, with some of the boiled plant on his chest. Her child had been returned by the next morning.

In passing, it’s interesting to note that in the same area of the Scottish Lowlands, the belief was that a child taken after baptism would be replaced with a faery child- one that would be bad-tempered and always crying. However, before baptism, the faeries seemed to feel less obligation to disguise their crime and instead would leave a pig, a hedgehog or a skinned and putrid cat. The folklorist Otta Swire met a woman at Avoch on the Moray Firth who was convinced that she was a changeling, her reasoning being that- unlike her siblings- she wasn’t fair but rather was dark and always crying.

Welsh crimbils

In Welsh, the basic phrase denoting a changeling is the very straightforward plentyn newid, ‘changed child,’ but other terms are far more descriptive and informative; various far more pejorative words are used to designate the beings who supplant human babies in in cradles. These include carfaglog/ carfaglach- ‘clumsy;’ crimbil/ crinbil- ‘withered limbed;’ crebachlyd- ‘crabbed, shrunken, wrinkled or withered’ and swbach- ‘weak, frail, wizened.’ These terms all give a clear impression of the physical nature of the unwelcome substitute that many a mother was horrified to discover, grizzling in her child’s cot.

In one story that describes the expulsion of a changeling, Professor John Rhys (or his informant) referred to the imposter as a crimbil, but he also used ‘dwarf’ several times (Celtic Folklore, vol.1, 265-267). This was not purely for variety, but seems to tell us something further about the infant. A healthy boy of three was swapped for a creature that didn’t grow and got uglier over the subsequent year. His failure to thrive, after he had been such a strapping infant previously, confirmed the mother’s sense that this was not her child. She got advice from a local wise man on exposing and banishing the changeling and was advised to use the old trick of egg shell brewing, followed by a curious ritual that required her to roast a pure black hen without plucking its feathers.

My interest here is how Professor Rhys developed this account (in vol.2, 673). He noted a place name near Llanedern, Gwern y Eiddil (the weakling’s meadow) and a character mentioned in the Triads, Eiddily Gorr (the weakling dwarf) and suggested that this dwarf (corr) was just another way of referring to a crimbil.

Rhys then extrapolated from this, proposing that many of the dwarf place names derived from corr/ corres (a male and female dwarf) or from corrach/ corrachod (dwarf/ dwarves) are places where small and ugly faeries were once encountered or which they inhabited; these include Cwm Corryn near Llanaelhaearn, Corwen/ Corwaen (‘the faeries meadow), Coed y Gorres (‘the female dwarf’s wood’) near Llanedern, nearby Nant y Cor (‘dwarf valley) and Castell Corryn at Cwmaman close to Aberdare. He even went so far as to suggest that the mysterious afanc of Welsh legend is some sort of ‘water dwarf.’

Shortness of stature was a obvious indication of faery nature; couple that with bad temper, unpleasant features and a weak and aged look, and you were likely to be looking at a changeling substituted for your beloved bouncing baby.

The Power of Names

I’ve written recently on the care that people generally took in referring to the faeries, choosing names that- whilst they could be very descriptive and informative- were still at the same time cautiously respectful. The frank and cruel terms used in respect of changelings very obviously don’t pay any attention at all to avoiding offence and, in fact, seem to go out of their way to insult the faes.

This makes me suspect that this was deliberate and was a part of the overall effort to get rid of the changeling and recover the real child. Polite names can ward off harm, but names can also be used to ‘lay’ or to exorcise faeries and boggarts. I’ll give two examples, the first from Whittingehame (near Dunbar, in East Lothian) in the Lowlands of Scotland. This village had long been haunted by the spirit of a baby that had been unwanted by its mother and had been murdered and secretly buried. At night, it used to run up and down between its burial spot and the churchyard, wailing ‘nameless me.’ People avoided the area, thinking that speaking to the little sprite could be fatal. One night, a drunk man came upon it and asked “How’s a’ wi’ you this morning, Short Hoggers?” The spirit was delighted to have a name at last and was able to vanish to heaven.

The second story comes from further north, near Dunkeld on the edge of the Highlands, and is far more apposite for our discussion. A brownie on a farm lived in a small burn but would leave it to visit a nearby farm to do some chores (and to play a lot of pranks). He always left a trail of wet footprints in his wake. Again, people were normally afraid to go too near the burn, but a drunk man one night heard the brownie splashing about in the stream and called out “Hoo’s it wi’ thee noo, Puddlefoot?” The brownie hated the name bestowed upon him- and vanished for ever.

I feel pretty sure that the brutally honest terms for changelings, highlighting their ugliness and scrawniness, were intended to upset them and drive them off, just as much as the more magical techniques that were employed.