Why do fairies kidnap people

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See the copyright statement for details. Even if that means Joe looks 30 and may be , he still has spent most of his life among people and not Leprechauns. The Faerie Queene contains stories of humans like the Redcrosse Knight who have grown up in Faerie Land because of this trope, aware of their race but not their true identity. In Raymond E. Feist's Faerie Tale , the boy Patrick is taken away by "the shining man" and replaced by a changeling.

The family takes the false child to the hospital, and there is a chilling description of the changeling's behavior, and how modern medicine attempts to explain it that his brain was damaged by fever, that they don't understand how his brain could look like it does under an MRI. In " Fairest of All ," this is a common belief among humans, and although Siofra and Mahon really are their parents' biological children, they're subjected to horrific abuse as their parents try to get their "real" children back.

In Good Omens , the infant Antichrist is swapped for a normal human baby this way, with demons instead of fairies. Thanks to the incompetence of an order of Satanic nuns, though, he winds up in the wrong normal human family. Clodagh must journey into the Land of Faerie to switch them back. This is part of a more complicated plot by Mac Dara of the Fair Folk to reclaim his half-human son Cathal , who was supposed to rejoin the Fair Folk on his seventh birthday but escaped. These are apparently very common among human-folk in The Inheritance Cycle.

Thus, when Elain is having a child in Inheritance , and Eragon asks Arya the elf to assist, she does so, but is very careful not to interfere too much because people fear her intentions. Then, when the child is born with a cleft lip, Eragon is called upon to heal the child. Before he takes the child away, he consents to allow the village healer Gertrude to accompany him into the tent where he goes to heal her, as he is mindful of Arya's warnings about fear of changelings.

He knows that her presence will reassure the villagers. It comes closest to being played straight with the Raven King who learns magic after being taken as a child, and Mrs. Strange who gets an actual replacement. In Isaac Asimov 's story " Kid Stuff ", a member of the insectoid race which is the basis for the legends about fairies states that his people really like milk, and in the past, some have apparently used their mind control powers to get it fresh.

Several of Caitlin R. Kiernan's novels feature "the Changelings": human children who have been abducted from their birth families and inducted into a cabal of subterranean monsters as servants and soldiers. A few of the so-called "Children of the Cuckoo" express longing for normal, human lives. The plot of Linda Haldeman's The Lastborn of Elvinwood largely revolves around the whys and hows of making such an exchange to save The Fair Folk from extinction.

One in John Crowley's Little, Big. After a while, it starts to disintegrate. In Jack Vance 's Lyonesse , Princess Madouc of Lyonesse is a changeling left by the fairies , although a relatively benign sort. Laurell K. Hamilton being a stickler for mythological accuracy, this is mentioned in passing in the Merry Gentry series, but is not practiced by any of the Fey living in the United States, since it might interfere with the driving plot. Another reason the fey in the series might not kidnap people is because they don't want humans hating them.

Their powers are failing. Or they were In The Midwich Cuckoos , Gordon Zellaby suggests that the Dayout babies , who resemble neither their mothers nor their fathers nor any known race, would have been undoubtedly identified as changelings in the past, though modern science has no word for them. He notes: "The idea of the changeling therefore, far from being novel is both old, and so widely distributed that it is unlikely to have arisen, or to have persisted, without cause, and occasional support.

True, one has not encountered the idea of it taking place on such a scale as this, but quantity does not, in this case, affect the quality of the event; it simply confirms it. Live-Action TV. The suspect, a video game addict with a Bastard Boyfriend , kept her daughter under the stairwell and refused to believe she was real, but had been replaced with another — unless she only heard her daughter's voice. But the minute she saw her daughter, the delusion would set in again.

One of the mysteries of The Family is whether or not the youngest son whose disappearance altered his family's dynamic and whose reappearance almost ten years later is disrupting things again is really the same kid.

One of the ads shows him watching a video of "his" birthday on repeat until he can mimic the kid on the screen; in the series the older brother points out that he likes eggs now when he hated them as a kid. They've been replaced by changelings, who kill their human fathers and feed on their mothers.

The Torchwood episode "Small Worlds" involved a girl who was a changeling unbeknownst to her or her family , and the fairies came to get her back. An episode of The BBC 's Merlin has a variation on this one, in which a princess is not replaced, but is possessed by a Sidhe in infancy, as part of a plot to put a Sidhe on the throne of Camelot. The princess doesn't know the Sidhe is inside her, although its presence makes her very clumsy and uncoordinated. The plot is that once she's married Prince Arthur the Sidhe will take her over completely.

Highlander has Duncan being called a changeling by people in his clan, as he was found as a baby after his parents' true child died at birth. There's no proof immortals were really changelings. The Haunting Hour episode "Intruders". Eve is contacted by a fairy named Lyria, who explains that Eve is really a fairy that had been taken in by a human couple. The Magicians : In a variant, Fray turns out to not be Fen and Elliot's real daughter, who died at birth. Rather early on in Fate: The Winx Saga , Aisha deduces that Bloom is a changeling who replaced her parents' stillborn biological daughter.

Bloom decides to tell her parents that she's a changeling at the end of season 1. His stage reason for this is that Heather was the changeling left in his place, of late returned to Faerieland. This is pretty much in keeping with the themes of most of his songs. While it certainly seems to be metaphorical, "Changeling" by The Doors drunkenly plays this trope out. Heather Dale 's Changeling Child is about this. An infertile woman asked the queen of the fairies for a child of her own however, being Literal-Minded , the fairies gave her a son who wouldn't grow.

Mythology and Religion. Trolls in Scandinavia were also fond of switching their own children for human babies. The way to get rid of the changeling, however, was to treat it horribly and beat it frequently. The changeling's true mother would see the way its child was being treated and rush to undo the swap. Slavic Mythology features boginki water spirits and their children, odmience, with much the same MO. In Iceland the Hidden People would steal infants and leave their elderly in stead of the child as a changeling.

Much more sensible than leaving your own child, just get rid of senile old pops and get a pretty little young thing instead. In German fairy-tales there are generally two possibilities to get rid of them: 1 treat them horribly as described above , or 2 doing something really stupid e. In the fairy tale " Childe Rowland ", Childe Rowland's sister Burd Ellen is kidnapped by elves when she inadvertently runs around a church "widdershins" i.

Tabletop Games. Changeling: The Lost is all about this. Of course, the faeries in this case don't stop at kids, and the "changelings" of the title are actually the humans they've taken. The Gentry usually just leave something made of detritus and a fragment of their captive's soul in their place. Tragically, such "fetches" not only look human, but often think they're human and have no idea of the truth.

Ars Magica. Faeries do the standard "kidnap children and replace them with changelings" routine. In Warhammer : The Wood Elves are not above this kind of thing, although they seldom leave anything behind as a replacement.

They tend to steal away beautiful boys from the land of Bretonnia surrounding their forest home, who then become ageless servants at their feasts. It is possible that stolen girls are returned to Bretonnia as its damsel sorceresses. A time when you are more likely to hear stories of encounters between humans and fairies.

So if this Halloween you go seeking winged friends, a warning to the curious, they might not be as sweet as you think. Tread carefully and never enter a fairy ring. Circles of mushrooms, they are believed to have been created by fairies dancing in rounds. According to folklore , if you do happen to step into such a circle of mushrooms, you may become invisible and be made to dance around until you die of exhaustion.

So a healthy fear of fairies is always wise. Portsmouth Climate Festival — Portsmouth, Portsmouth. Edition: Available editions United Kingdom. Become an author Sign up as a reader Sign in. Sam George , University of Hertfordshire. There seem to be three broad strategies employed by the fairies in taking infants. They kidnap them, they trick them or they lure them away. There are ample examples to illustrate all of these ploys.

It was believed that the fairies were always on the lookout for chances to abduct infants see, for example, Evans Wentz, Fairy Faith, Muriel Dawson, Welcome to Fairyland. Obviously, it is easiest to kidnap children if they come willingly. It is perfectly possible to achieve this by friendly means. In one Scottish example, a little girl used to regularly play with the faeries under the Hill of Tulach at Monzie. One day they cut a lock of her hair and told her that next time she visited she would stay with them for ever.

Fortunately, the child told her mother what had happened and she immediately worked various charms and never let her daughter out to play again. A boy from Borgue in Kirkcudbrightshire used regularly to make extended visits to the Good Folk underground in the same manner; he was protected by suspending a crucifix blessed by a Catholic priest around his neck.

Indeed, in one case from Orkney, a little girl so pestered the local trows with repeated visits to their underground homes that, in their irritation, they breathed on her and paralysed her for life.

The Scottish ballad of Leesom Brand fits with the friendly visit pattern of journey to Faery. It is at this point that this story takes a slightly uncomfortable turn.

Simply opening the door to a human child might be enough to tempt it in, then. More often, some additional inducement was necessary. He had run away from home after an argument and had hidden for two days on a river bank. Somewhat comparable is the tale of a boy from St. Allen in Cornwall who was led into a Faery by a lovely lady.

He first strayed into a wood following the sound of music and after much wandering feel asleep. When he awoke, a beautiful woman was with him and guided him through fantastic palaces. Eventually he was found by searchers, once again asleep. Some children require more material temptation. On the Isle of Man, a girl was walking over a bridge when three little men appeared to her and offered her a farthing to go with them.

She wisely refused, knowing that consent would place her in their power for ever. In Northumberland, at Chathill Farm near Alnwick, there was a well-known fairy ring.

Elsewhere in the north of England, it has been reported that the fairies would leave out fairy butter as bait for children.

Hester Margetson. These inducements to stray start to merge into out and out tricks. For example, a boy lost on Dartmoor was found by his mother seated under an oak tree known to be a pixie haunt. The son of a blacksmith on the island of Islay, aged fourteen, suddenly fell ill and wasted away.

It was revealed to the father that, in fact, he had been taken by the fairies and a changeling left behind. This the father exposed with the trick of brewing in egg shells and then violently expelled. However, he had then to go to the fairy knoll to recover his son rather than the boy being automatically returned as is the usual practice. He was working for the fairies there as a blacksmith, which may explain their reluctance to part with him. Some children are snatched without ceremony.

He ran, but only just kept ahead of them, and when he was back at his home, he had lost the power of speech and his hands and feet were twisted awry. He remained this way for a week. This could almost be a changeling story see Evans Wentz Sarah Stilwell Weber, Water Babies. Waldron tells of a ten-year-old girl from Ballasalla on the Isle of Man who had a lucky escape from such a kidnap attempt. Out on an errand one day, she was detained by a crowd of little men. Some grabbed hold of her and declared their intention to take her with them; others in the party objected to the idea.

A fight broke out amongst the fairies and, because she had incited this discord, they spanked her but let her get away. The truth of her account was seen in the little red hand prints marking her buttocks. I have assumed so far, naturally, that parents would not wish to see their offspring taken to fairyland.

One incident contradicts this. A woman from Badenoch in the Highlands was given shelter overnight in a fairy hill but, the next morning, she had to promise to surrender her child to them so as to be set free. She agreed, but was to visit her daughter in the hill. After a while, with no sign of things changing, the infant complained that she had been abandoned by her mother.

The woman scolded the girl for suggesting this and the fairies ejected her from the hill and never allowed her in again. This suggestion that fairy abduction might sometimes be a boon for the child is confirmed by another source. Going with the fairies need not be prolonged nor unpleasant, fortunately. Many stories indicate that children will be well cared for in Faery.

A game keeper and his wife lived at Chudleigh, on Dartmoor. This couple had two children, and one morning when the wife had dressed the eldest she let her run away to play while she dressed the baby. In due course, father and mother realised that the child had disappeared.

They searched for days with help from their neighbours, and even bloodhounds, without finding her. The pixies were supposed to have stolen the child, but to have cared for her and returned her. There are, therefore, many ways of luring children into fairyland- some are friendly and almost consensual, others are more underhand and forcible. I discuss all the many aspects of these abductions and how to avoid them in my recently published book Faery.

The abduction of children is just one aspect of the Darker Side of Faery, a subject explored in detail in my book of that title, published in The sluagh are the fairy host in the folklore of the Scottish Highlands. In this region of Britain people may be abducted by being taken inside a fairy hill a tomhan or they may be snatched up and carried away by the sluagh. I touched on this subject briefly in my posting on elf-shots , but return to it in more detail now.

The sluagh, or fairy host, is known by several names in Gaelic, all of which give us some clue as to their nature or origin. This may reflect their flight through the air, or even their physical nature. The Reverend Kirk, meanwhile, distinguishes between the sluagh saoghalta and the sluagh sith. We can learn something more from actual experiences of contact with the host. John MacPhee of Uist was outside his house one night when he heard a sound coming from the West a notoriously fay direction like the breaking of the sea.

He saw a mass of small men coming in a crowd from that direction and suddenly felt hot, as if a crowd of people had surrounded him and were pressing in, breathing upon him. Then he was carried off at great speed, flying through the air to the graveyard at Dalibrog, seventeen miles distant. For a moment or two he was set down, and the sensation of heat left him. Then the host returned, he felt hot again, and was carried back to his home.

After this experience, MacPhee became sickly and thin. The same is true perhaps for those people who are taken repeatedly by the sluagh. The mass nature of the sluagh is apparent.

For instance, on Barra Evans Wentz was told that the host went about at midnight, travelling in fine weather against the wind like a covey of birds Evans Wentz, Fairy Faith, The host travels across the land by several means.

They can use whirlwinds, as Scottish witch suspect, Bessie Dunlop, attested. The host can also travel on objects imbued with faery glamour, such as bulrushes, docks, ragwort and withered grass stems. Physical travel is not necessary, though, for a man in Sutherland was taken in spirit one night by the sluagh , even after his friends had forcibly restrained his body to try to prevent his abduction.

If a person is called to travel with the sluagh, there is no denying the summons. In another instance, a man on Skye saw the host approaching and begged his friend to hold him tightly to prevent his abduction. The reason for these journeys seems to be uniformly malicious.

The primary aim is to abduct humans, and secondary purposes are shooting elf-bolts at people and livestock or stealing human property- usually food and drink. Some trows flew all the way from Shetland to Norway to abduct a newly married woman, for example, and some fairies in Moray conveyed a man to Paris, although much more local journeys are far more typical Evans Wentz, There are numerous accounts of the hosts battling in the sky on cold and frosty nights and especially at Halloween , leaving pools of blood fuil nan sluagh on the ground in the morning as testimony to their violent slaughter Evans Wentz, Flight might be used to hunt or take people or animals, but the experience of flight itself might be sufficiently unpleasant to be a punishment in itself.

A minister in Ross-shire in Scotland had spoken slightingly of the fairies and they exacted their revenge by picking him up and carrying him head over heels through the air.

The accounts so far, especially that of the man taken despite the best efforts of his friends to prevent it, might suggest that the sluagh are pretty much invincible and irresistible. This is not the case, fortunately. Very simple measures can defeat them. These are magical defences; physical means of resistance tend to be much less certain and more risky. Some men were tending the herds at Cornaigbeg Farm on Tiree when they heard something passing them on the road.

It sounded like a flock of sheep passing, but one of the dogs became very agitated and chased after it. Eventually the poor hound returned- it had lost all its hair and was torn and bloody, dying soon afterwards. The faeries have several means of flight — and several types of motion — so that riding straws or moving in a whirlwind are just a sample of their ways of getting about. For more on abductions, the sluagh and The Darker Side of Faery, see my book of that title:.

The old couple had half a score of children, who were all reared in this place. They lived as they best could on the produce of a few acres of ground, which were too poor to keep even a goat in good heart. The heaps of crogans limpet shells about the hut led one to believe that their chief food was limpets and gweans periwinkles.

They had, however, fish and potatoes most days, and pork and broth now and then of a Sunday. At Christmas and the Feast they had white bread. We are, however, only concerned with one of them, his daughter Cherry. Cherry could run as fast as a hare, and was ever full of frolic and mischief….

The area is also endowed with numerous megalithic sites, adding an even greater aura of ancient mystery to the landscape. Soon after Cherry got into her teens she became very discontented, because year after year her mother had been promising her a new frock… Cherry was sixteen. One of her playmates had a new dress smartly trimmed with ribbons, and she told Cherry how she had been to Nancledra to the preaching, and how she had ever so many sweethearts who brought her home.

This put the volatile Cherry in a fever of desire. Towednack is smaller and nearer to Zennor. Her mother wished her to go to Towednack that she might have the chance of seeing her now and then of a Sunday.

One fine morning Cherry tied up a few things in a bundle and prepared to start. She promised her father that she would get service as near home as she could, and come home at the earliest opportunity. Cherry took the road leading south to Ludgvan and Gulval. When she lost sight of the chimneys of Trereen just north of Nancledra , she got out of heart and had a great mind to go home again.