Any money found by the roadside was in the same way ascribed by our rustics to the fairies, some kindly spirit having dropped it by the way for the benefit of the battered wayfarer. As a boy one day in Anglesea was going out just before daybreak, he saw before him in the grey and obscure light a party of little beings dancing, as usual, in a circle. He hastened home in alarm and without making any further investigation, and on his return found a groat on a stone. He often saw the fairies afterwards at the same place, and as regularly found the money laid for him at the same spot. His possession of funds awakened the paternal curiosity, and he at last confessed the whole matter. Ever after this, though he often passed by the scene of the revels and scanned the wayside stone intently, he never saw either fairy frolic or fairy fee again.
Though fairies had the power of making themselves invisible, and generally resented the intrusion of any human spectator, they were willing to show themselves sometimes, it would appear, though frequently the consequences were not altogether agreeable to the person so favoured. One evening the curiosity of a countryman, in his progress homewards, was powerfully excited by a wild though gentle melody which apparently proceeded from amidst some rocks, resting in picturesque confusion on the slopes of the mountain. After listening for some time he lost his track, and suddenly found himself close beside a troop of elves, who were dancing round a mysterious circle of “stocks and stones.” Before he had much time for thought the elfin-troop surrounded him and quickly hurried him aloft, one of the party first asking the question whether he would prefer to be conveyed with a high, a moderate, or a low wind? Had he chosen the first, or “above the wind,” he would instantly have soared into the most elevated regions; but our poor bewildered farmer unwisely made choice of the low wind, thus rejecting (as is too often the case in life) the middle course, or “with the wind,” where he would have enjoyed an easy and pleasant aerial excursion. The mischievous little spirits then hurried him along the surface of the ground, over bog and briar, thorn and ditch, until at last they threw him in a most miserable plight head foremost in the mire.
In Shakespeare’s time it was a belief that no one could see the fairies and live, for he makes Falstaff exclaim, “They are fairies, he who looks on them shall die;” but any one who desires to see them through the eye of a poet should read most carefully the altogether delightful “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” The temptation to quote liberally from it is extreme, but its beauty requires it to be read in its entirety.
The references in that play to changelings reminds us that we have not yet referred to this notable piece of family practice.
Both the good and the bad fairies used to recruit their numbers by carrying off children, or young men and women. The malignant race delighted in spiriting away the unbaptized offspring (for it was only over these that they had any power) of affectionate parents, particularly when heirs, that they might produce as much mischief and vexation as possible; while the benignant fairies never took any recruits but the orphans of pious parents, who had no protectors, or were oppressed by cruel and unjust guardians. Such protégés, or rather naturalised fairies, were permitted twice to resume their original state, and appear to their kindred and acquaintance. The first time was at the end of seven years, when, if they had been children when they were taken away, they appeared to their nearest relatives, and declared to them their state, whether they were pleased with their condition as fairies, or wished to be restored to that of men. If they had been boys or girls when they were removed from this upper earth, and had by this time grown to men or women, they always appeared to persons of a different sex to themselves, with whom they had fallen in love, to whom they declared their state and passion, and, according to circumstances, either wished their lover to accompany them to Fairyland, or suggested to them a method whereby to recover them out of the hands of their elfish lords.
The second appearance, at the end of fourteen years, was for the same purpose, and on this occasion they were either rescued from the power of the fairies or confirmed under their dominion for ever.
When the bad fairies carried off a child, they always left one of their own number in its place. This equivocal creature was always distinguished by being insatiable for food, and if kept, seldom failed to draw its supposed mother into a consumption.
Whenever a family suspected that a child had been changed for a fairy, they had recourse to the following strange, but, in the opinion of the country, infallible ordeal. A sufficient quantity of clay was produced from the eastern side of a hill, with which all the windows, doors, and every aperture through the house, excepting the chimney, were built up. A large fire was then made of peats, and the supposed fairy, wrapped in the sheets or blankets of the woman’s bed, was laid on the fire when it was at the briskest, while one of the bystanders repeated—
“Come to me
Gin mine ye be;
But gin ye be a fairy wicht,
Fast and flee till endless nicht.”
If the child actually was the woman’s it instantly rolled off the fire upon the floor; but, if it was a fairy, it flew away up the chimney with a tremendous shriek, and was never more seen, while the real infant was found lying upon the threshold.