CHANGELINGS.
A young lad was sent for the loan of a corn sieve to a neighbour’s house. He was a changeling, and in the house to which he went there was another like himself. He found no one in but his fellow-elf. A woman, in a closet close by, overheard the conversation of the two. The first asked for the sieve, and the other replied, “Ask it in an honest way (that is, in Fairy language) seeing I am alone.”33 The first then said (and his words have as much sense in English as in Gaelic):
The words are a ludicrous imitation of the sound made by the fan in winnowing corn, and several versions of them exist.
A child, in Skye, ate such a quantity of food, people suspected it could not be ‘canny.’ A man of skill was sent for, and on his saying a rhyme over it, the changeling became an old man.
A changeling in Hianish (some say Sanndaig), Tiree, was driven away by a man of skill who came, and, standing in the door, said:
Drim-derg, or the Red Ridge, is a common in the neighbourhood of Hianish. Fin’s sword, ‘the son of Luin,’ was of such superior metal that it cut through six feet of whatever substance was struck by it, and an inch beyond. Its peculiar virtue was “never to leave a remnant from its blow.” When the changeling heard the bare mention of it, with the aversion of his race to steel, he jumped, like a fish out of the water (thug e iasg-leum as), rushed out of the house and was never seen again. The real child was found outside the house.
A woman was told by her neighbours that her child, which was not thriving, was a changeling, and that she ought to throw it in the river. The imp, frightened by the counsel, advised the contrary in an expression, which is now proverbial, “Whether it be fat or lean, every man should rear a calf for himself” (Air dha bhi reamhar na caol, is mairg nach beathaicheadh laogh dha fhéin).