How many times have you read a story in which the baby is changed at birth? Many! From soap operas from around the world to the story of Moses, the list is very long. In the case of Irish mythology this idea is embodied in the figure of the changelings.
A changeling is a creature left in place of human baby stolen by fairies and it seems to have to do with the common death of babies and young children in the Middle Ages. And why would fairies take a human child? Well, many times so that he becomes a servant of the magical world, to receive the love of human parents, for an evil or in some cases so that an old fairy can enjoy parental pampering.
It was also said that women and blonde hair attracted fairies, that trolls liked the idea of being raised by humans, or that these trolls took children who had not been baptized. Folklore has many arguments. Sometimes scissors or charms were left in the cribs to defend the children from these fairies with evil intentions. The Irish of other times were very believers in all this mythology and it seems that in some corners of the country these ideas persisted until the end of the XNUMXth century.
If you have read A Midsummer Night by William Shakespeare you will remember that a changeling appears there and if you saw Gone with the Wind it took away you may remember that the beautiful Scarlett O'Hara believed that the illegitimate son of Rhett Butler was one of these strange and magical creatures.