The Changeling (ML 5058) Irish Versions of a Migratory Legend in Their International Context

Changelings: alterity beyond difference

“…13 Yet despite their appearance across Europe (and indeed, beyond) it seems that ideas about changelings were particularly elaborated within Celtic language areas, thus several accounts describe changelings in Brittany, Cornwall, and Wales. 14 In this essay, however, I want to focus specifically on changelings within the Gaelic culture of Ireland and Scotland, and in doing so I draw heavily on Ronald Black's invaluable edition of John Gregorson Campbell's writings on the topic. 15 A typical account comes from Glengarry, and was published in 1910, though presumably relates to events somewhat earlier: "There was a widow in Glengarry who had a baby boy.…”

Savage Paganism: The Playboy of the Western World

“…145 Changelings were also said to be 'witty and mentally precocious' 146 and this would also explain Christy's hyperbole and talismanic performance at the races where Christy is crowned as 'the champion of the world I tell you, and there isn't a hap'orth isn't falling lucky to his hands to-day.' 147 Séamas Mac Philib maintains that '[t]he most common way in which [a changeling] betrays his real identity is through some unusual behaviour when he has been left alone and thinks himself unobserved' 148 and indeed, when Christy is left alone in the shebeen he adopts some peculiar behaviour that the Mayo girls have 'never seen to this day'. 149 Behaviour such as taking 'the looking-glass from the wall and [putting] it on the back of a chair; then [sitting] down in front of it' and congratulating how he will 'be growing fine from this day, the way [he'll] have a soft lovely skin on [him] and won't be the like of the clumsy young fellows do be ploughing all times in the earth and dung.'…”