“From thence a faery thee unweeting reft,
There as thou slepst in tender swadling band,
And her base elfin brood there for thee left:
Such men do chaungelings call, so chaunged by faeries theft.”
Occasionally fairies played pranks with new-born children by exchanging them. To this notion King Henry refers (“1 Henry IV.” i. 1) when, speaking of Hotspur compared with his own profligate son, he exclaims:
“O that it could be prov’d
That some night-tripping fairy had exchang’d
In cradle-clothes our children where they lay,
And call’d mine Percy, his Plantagenet!”
To induce the fairies to restore the stolen child, it was customary in Ireland either to put the one supposed of being a changeling on a hot shovel, or to torment it in some other way. It seems that, in Denmark, the mother heats the oven, and places the changeling on the peel, pretending to put it in, or whips it severely with a rod, or throws it into the water. In the Western Isles of Scotland idiots are supposed to be the fairies’ changelings, and, in order to regain the lost child, parents have recourse to the following device. They place the changeling on the beach, below high-water mark, when the tide is out, and pay no heed to its screams, believing that the fairies, rather than suffer their offspring to be drowned by the rising water, will convey it away, and restore the child they had stolen. The sign that this has been done is the cessation of the child’s screaming. The most effectual preservative, however, against fairy influence, is supposed to be baptism; and hence, among the superstitious, this rite is performed as soon as possible.
A form of superstition very common in days gone by was the supposed influence of the “Evil eye,” being designated by the terms “o’erlooked,” “forelooked,” or “eye-bitten,” certain persons being thought to possess the power of inflicting injury by merely looking on those whom they wished to harm. Even the new-born child was not exempt from this danger, and various charms were practised to avert it. In the “Merry Wives of Windsor” (v. 5), Pistol says of Falstaff:
“Vile worm, thou wast o’erlook’d, even in thy birth.”
This piece of folk-lore may be traced back to the time of the Romans, and, in the late Professor Conington’s translation of the “Satires of Persius,” it is thus spoken of: “Look here! a grandmother or a superstitious aunt has taken baby from his cradle, and is charming his forehead against mischief by the joint action of her middle-finger and her purifying spittle; for she knows right well how to check the evil eye.”[702] Is is again alluded to in the “Merchant of Venice” (iii. 2), where Portia, expressing to Bassanio her feelings of regard, declares:
“Beshrew your eyes,
They have o’erlook’d me, and divided me;
One half of me is yours, the other half yours;”
and in “Titus Andronicus” (ii. 1), Aaron speaks of Tamora as:
“faster bound to Aaron’s charming eyes
Than is Prometheus tied to Caucasus.”