1 00:00:06,320 --> 00:00:11,570 Modern Fairies and Loathly Ladies podcast series one. 2 00:00:11,570 --> 00:00:22,130 Fairies, Children and Changelings. Hello, this is Faye Hield and this is Caroline Larrington in the first episode in this series. 3 00:00:22,130 --> 00:00:25,950 We introduced our project, Modern Fairies and Loathly Ladies. 4 00:00:25,950 --> 00:00:32,930 In this project, we research traditional tales about fairies in the British Isles and then investigate how some contemporary musicians, 5 00:00:32,930 --> 00:00:41,090 writers and artists re mediate or are inspired by those tales to make new works of art that speak to our modern lives. 6 00:00:41,090 --> 00:00:49,760 Today, in the fourth episode of the series, we're going to talk about some of the most personal and distressing tales about fairies. 7 00:00:49,760 --> 00:00:56,570 These can involve the snatching away of human children and leaving a changeling an unresponsive, 8 00:00:56,570 --> 00:01:02,450 difficult, wizened child that doesn't seem to grow or thrive in its place. 9 00:01:02,450 --> 00:01:11,420 In another story, we'll hear about how some mysterious children appear near a village in Suffolk and they claim to come from another world entirely. 10 00:01:11,420 --> 00:01:17,760 And then they have to try to adjust or not to life in mediaeval East Anglia. 11 00:01:17,760 --> 00:01:27,270 But first, we're going to pick up on some of the stories we were talking about in the last podcast, and this is a story called Midwife to the Fairies. 12 00:01:27,270 --> 00:01:36,560 Here's a version that comes from Suffolk. Midwife to the fairies. 13 00:01:36,560 --> 00:01:41,270 In the town of Stowmarket in Suffolk, there lived a skilled midwife. 14 00:01:41,270 --> 00:01:48,110 One day she found a little man standing on her doorstep asking for her help with his wife, who was in labour. 15 00:01:48,110 --> 00:01:56,660 She went off with him and made sure that the baby was born safely. Sometime later, she was at the market in Stowmarket and to her surprise, 16 00:01:56,660 --> 00:02:04,760 she caught sight of the fairy man helping himself to quantities of beef in the butcher's shop as ferries are normally invisible to humans. 17 00:02:04,760 --> 00:02:13,190 The butcher, of course, was quite unaware of what was going on. The midwife greeted her acquaintance cheerfully and asked him how the baby was. 18 00:02:13,190 --> 00:02:20,480 Mother and child were doing well, she was told. And the little man asked her with which eye she could see him. 19 00:02:20,480 --> 00:02:28,630 She pointed to the eye for while in fairyland she had rubbed some ointment intended for the child's eyes upon her own eye, 20 00:02:28,630 --> 00:02:36,250 and the fairy man blew on it. After that, she never saw him or any other members of the family tribe. 21 00:02:36,250 --> 00:02:43,050 Again. So in that story, that's a very typical example, 22 00:02:43,050 --> 00:02:53,020 isn't the kind of service that the ferries need from humans that their babies can't apparently be born by themselves without human intervention? 23 00:02:53,020 --> 00:02:58,630 But, you know, although the midwife did her thing, a rather cruel in some ways. 24 00:02:58,630 --> 00:03:02,290 There has to be some kind of limitation on on the exchange there. 25 00:03:02,290 --> 00:03:10,270 So they need something from her. But she cannot just leave with all their knowledge and the ability to see fairy world and what's going on. 26 00:03:10,270 --> 00:03:14,140 You know, there's quite touching that she sort of gives herself away by behaving just like 27 00:03:14,140 --> 00:03:18,520 a human midwife would when she sees the father of a baby that she's delivered, 28 00:03:18,520 --> 00:03:26,490 that she says, oh, hello. And she also after the baby. And that's what reveals the fact that she's got that fairy ornament in her eye. 29 00:03:26,490 --> 00:03:30,070 You can see why the fairies need their invisibility. Well, yes. 30 00:03:30,070 --> 00:03:35,440 I can't imagine the fairies would get away with just wandering around through the market if we all knew they were there. 31 00:03:35,440 --> 00:03:42,220 Stealing bits of meat has perhaps for the baby. I mean, who knows? But that does show the fairy difference. 32 00:03:42,220 --> 00:03:51,040 I think that fairies don't necessarily sympathise with with the midwife just because she has warm, loving feelings towards the child. 33 00:03:51,040 --> 00:03:55,210 They just go, nope, he broke the rules. And we're going to punish you. 34 00:03:55,210 --> 00:03:59,740 But there is a different levels of viciousness on that punishment. 35 00:03:59,740 --> 00:04:10,630 So in some cases, the the fairy realises that this human can see the fairy world and can blow on the eyes to get rid of this magical power of vision. 36 00:04:10,630 --> 00:04:17,560 And in other cases, it's just a result. It's not the way that she spoke to the fairy, pokes out the eye. 37 00:04:17,560 --> 00:04:23,290 And that's, I think, a bit grim. Now, here's another story, the tale of the green children. 38 00:04:23,290 --> 00:04:32,140 And this is an extraordinary story that's recorded in two separate chronicles that come from the late 12th century in mediaeval England. 39 00:04:32,140 --> 00:04:41,920 And both tales tell about some strange children, bright green in colour, who appears suddenly one day near the village of Wolf Pitt. 40 00:04:41,920 --> 00:04:47,700 Yes, Brian McMahon again. Green children. 41 00:04:47,700 --> 00:04:51,950 Here's a version of this tale from William of Newburgh. 42 00:04:51,950 --> 00:05:00,170 In East Anglia, there is a village which is said to lie four or five miles from the famous monastery of the Blessed King and Mount Edmond, 43 00:05:00,170 --> 00:05:04,490 close to the village. Some very ancient ditches are visible in English. 44 00:05:04,490 --> 00:05:11,490 They are called wolf pits or wolf ditches, and they lend their name to the village close by. 45 00:05:11,490 --> 00:05:15,870 At harvest time, when the harvesters were busy in the fields gathering the crops. 46 00:05:15,870 --> 00:05:20,400 Two children, a boy and a girl, emerged from these ditches. 47 00:05:20,400 --> 00:05:28,770 Their entire bodies were greed and they were wearing clothes of unusual colour and unknown material. 48 00:05:28,770 --> 00:05:34,560 As they wandered bemused over the countryside, they were seised by the Reapers and led the village. 49 00:05:34,560 --> 00:05:40,680 Many people flocked to observe this most unusual sight, and for several days they were kept without food. 50 00:05:40,680 --> 00:05:47,000 So they were now almost fainting with hunger. Yet they paid no attention to any food offered to them. 51 00:05:47,000 --> 00:05:54,690 It then chanced that beans were brought in from the fields. They want grabbed these and looked for the beans in the stalks. 52 00:05:54,690 --> 00:05:59,070 But when they found nothing in the hollow of the stalks, they wept bitterly. 53 00:05:59,070 --> 00:06:02,190 Then one of the bystanders pulled the beans from the pots and offered them 54 00:06:02,190 --> 00:06:06,780 to the children who had once gleefully took and ate them for several months. 55 00:06:06,780 --> 00:06:10,500 They were nourished by this food until they learnt to eat bread. 56 00:06:10,500 --> 00:06:15,990 In the end, they gradually lost their own colour when the qualities of our foodstuffs had their effect. 57 00:06:15,990 --> 00:06:20,400 They became like us and also learnt the use of our speech. 58 00:06:20,400 --> 00:06:25,050 Persons of prudence decided that they should receive the sacrament of holy baptism. 59 00:06:25,050 --> 00:06:33,630 And this was also administered. But the boy, who seemed to be younger, lived only a short time after baptism and then died prematurely. 60 00:06:33,630 --> 00:06:40,440 Whereas the girl continued unaffected, differing, not even in the slightest way from the women of our kind. 61 00:06:40,440 --> 00:06:48,020 She certainly took her husband later at Llyn, according to the story, and was said to be living a few years ago. 62 00:06:48,020 --> 00:06:53,330 Once they had the use of our language, they were asked who they were and where they came from. 63 00:06:53,330 --> 00:06:59,310 They are said to have replied. We are people from St. Martin's land. 64 00:06:59,310 --> 00:07:04,030 He is accorded special reverence in the country of our birth. 65 00:07:04,030 --> 00:07:12,790 When they were next asked where that land was and how they had come from that war pit, they said we do not know either of these things. 66 00:07:12,790 --> 00:07:19,150 All we remember is that one day we were pasturing our fathers flocks in the fields when we heard a mighty din, 67 00:07:19,150 --> 00:07:23,980 such as we often hear at St. Edmunds when they say the bells are ringing out. 68 00:07:23,980 --> 00:07:29,940 When we turned our attention to the sound which caused to surprise, it was as though we were out of our minds, 69 00:07:29,940 --> 00:07:35,640 for we suddenly found ourselves amongst you in the fields where you were harvesting. 70 00:07:35,640 --> 00:07:44,540 When they were asked whether people believed in Christ there or whether the sun rose, they said that it was a Christian country and had churches. 71 00:07:44,540 --> 00:07:47,870 But the sun does not rise amongst the natives of our land. 72 00:07:47,870 --> 00:07:55,190 They said, and it obtains very little light from the sun's rays, but is satisfied with the measure of its brightness. 73 00:07:55,190 --> 00:08:00,260 Which in your country precedes its rising or follows its setting? 74 00:08:00,260 --> 00:08:08,040 Moreover, a shining land is visible not far from our own, but a very broad river divides the two. 75 00:08:08,040 --> 00:08:16,770 They are said to have made these and many other replies too long to narrate to interested enquirers. 76 00:08:16,770 --> 00:08:24,580 Another late 12th century chronicler, Ralph of Coggs Hall, has a slightly different version. 77 00:08:24,580 --> 00:08:29,620 Another wonderful thing happened in Suffolk at St. Mary's of the Wolf Pits, 78 00:08:29,620 --> 00:08:35,500 a boy and his sister were found by the inhabitants of that place near the mouth of a pit which is there. 79 00:08:35,500 --> 00:08:38,560 Who had the form of all their limbs like to those of other men. 80 00:08:38,560 --> 00:08:43,540 But they differed in the colour of their skin from all the people of our habitable world, 81 00:08:43,540 --> 00:08:48,040 for the whole surface of their skin was tinged of a green colour. 82 00:08:48,040 --> 00:08:56,530 No one could understand their speech when they were brought as curiosities to the house of a certain night, Sir Richard, to comb that wicks. 83 00:08:56,530 --> 00:09:02,440 They wept bitterly. Bread and other vittles were set before them, but they would touch none of them. 84 00:09:02,440 --> 00:09:04,390 Though they were tormented by great hunger. 85 00:09:04,390 --> 00:09:11,920 As the girl afterwards acknowledged at length when some beans just cut with their stalks were brought into the house, 86 00:09:11,920 --> 00:09:16,870 they made signs with Greater Vendetti that they should be given to them when they were brought. 87 00:09:16,870 --> 00:09:22,990 They opened the stalks instead of the pods, thinking that the beans were in the hollow of them, but not finding them there. 88 00:09:22,990 --> 00:09:26,770 They began to weep anew when those who were present saw this. 89 00:09:26,770 --> 00:09:31,690 They opened the pods and showed them the naked beans. They fed on these with delight. 90 00:09:31,690 --> 00:09:40,030 And for a long time tasted no other food. The boy, however, was always languid and depressed, and he died within a short time. 91 00:09:40,030 --> 00:09:47,850 The girl enjoyed continual good health and became accustomed to various kinds of food, lost completely that green colour and gradually recovered. 92 00:09:47,850 --> 00:09:50,860 The sanguine habit of her entire body. 93 00:09:50,860 --> 00:09:57,490 She was afterwards regenerated by the boon of holy baptism and lived for many years in the service of that night, 94 00:09:57,490 --> 00:10:03,460 as I have frequently heard from him and his family, and was rather loose and wanton in her conduct, 95 00:10:03,460 --> 00:10:11,890 being frequently asked about the people of her country. She asserted that the inhabitants and all they had in that country were of a green colour 96 00:10:11,890 --> 00:10:17,560 and that they saw no sun but enjoyed a degree of light like what is after sunset. 97 00:10:17,560 --> 00:10:21,340 Being asked how she came into this country with the aforesaid boy, 98 00:10:21,340 --> 00:10:27,370 she replied that as they were following their flocks, they came to a certain cavern on entering, 99 00:10:27,370 --> 00:10:32,470 which they heard a delightful sound of bells ravished by whose sweetness they went for a long 100 00:10:32,470 --> 00:10:37,570 time wandering on through the cabin until they came to its mouth when they came out of it. 101 00:10:37,570 --> 00:10:46,630 They were struck senseless by the excessive light of the sun and the unusual temperature of the air, and they thus lay for a long time. 102 00:10:46,630 --> 00:10:58,900 Being terrified by the noise of those who came on them, they wish to fly, but they could not find the entrance of the cabin before they were caught. 103 00:10:58,900 --> 00:11:07,240 I find this one fascinating because it's logged in a contemporary official record, lots of the others try iTunes. 104 00:11:07,240 --> 00:11:11,920 It's kind of a romantic aural narrative of where these stories came from. 105 00:11:11,920 --> 00:11:18,760 But this one seems so important to people that these children were recorded and in two different contexts. 106 00:11:18,760 --> 00:11:24,160 Yes, that's interesting. There is obviously a story people knew and that it went through their lives as well. 107 00:11:24,160 --> 00:11:30,850 And the daughter, the little girl, she she grew up and got married as well and became part of society. 108 00:11:30,850 --> 00:11:36,670 And the boy just couldn't hack it. And I always feel terribly sorry for the distress of those children. 109 00:11:36,670 --> 00:11:42,010 And they've emerged out of their their strange twilight world following the sound of church bells. 110 00:11:42,010 --> 00:11:48,580 Again, this kind of tension that we often get between church bells symbolising Christianity and 111 00:11:48,580 --> 00:11:56,000 the the side other world of the fairies and just being stuck and they can't go home again. 112 00:11:56,000 --> 00:12:03,130 Now, the slightly cynical, not believing in fairies, part of me thinks of these as not fairy children. 113 00:12:03,130 --> 00:12:10,930 And what it must be like to be believed to be fairy children if if they had come indeed from somewhere else and they still can't get home. 114 00:12:10,930 --> 00:12:18,130 And that's still in this very alien environment. And yet they didn't have the language immediately to explain. 115 00:12:18,130 --> 00:12:22,930 So they eventually learn to talk and then they explain it. 116 00:12:22,930 --> 00:12:27,280 But perhaps quite a long time off, though, where it was they came from. 117 00:12:27,280 --> 00:12:33,400 And perhaps it was just a village down the road. But they were they spoke a different kind of dialect. 118 00:12:33,400 --> 00:12:41,290 Yeah, well, the bit that I find particularly open now is that the daughter does go off and get married, 119 00:12:41,290 --> 00:12:47,530 but there's no record or whether she has children. So if indeed these were children of the fairies. 120 00:12:47,530 --> 00:12:54,880 Is there a bloodline still going on down through there? If you are a descendant of grandchildren, please write, right? 121 00:12:54,880 --> 00:13:06,010 Yes, let us know. In the meantime, however, here's a wonderful poem that Jane Yolen, an American poet, wrote about the green children. 122 00:13:06,010 --> 00:13:15,480 Here it is, sung by one of our artists on the project, Murray Waterson, who's slightly altered the words. 123 00:13:15,480 --> 00:13:21,690 Des Wyvern Lie and. 124 00:13:21,690 --> 00:13:35,130 Stones, the arms and legs scream, not the dark green 5V nor the green of apples. 125 00:13:35,130 --> 00:13:46,810 That and some arms, not the deep green of the sea, but solve the Liebreich in. 126 00:13:46,810 --> 00:14:04,030 When they. And they SWO could bring language which trees and flowers. 127 00:14:04,030 --> 00:14:19,170 The boy died of a waisting lived aid, saying she got angry. 128 00:14:19,170 --> 00:14:26,060 Why? To rage. To Kris Dunn. 129 00:14:26,060 --> 00:14:32,120 I'm married. Why not lie to me? 130 00:14:32,120 --> 00:14:40,860 Why not? Why? Travis Wax is. 131 00:14:40,860 --> 00:14:48,030 No. Why? To see us from the shadows. 132 00:14:48,030 --> 00:14:56,130 She was the White House. Shines. 133 00:14:56,130 --> 00:15:09,250 That is all that is. That is. 134 00:15:09,250 --> 00:15:17,350 That was Murray Waterson with Ben Nichols and Barney Moss Brown singing their version of Janice Allen's poem, The Green Children. 135 00:15:17,350 --> 00:15:23,830 Another kind of child based story is the swopping of human and fairy babies. 136 00:15:23,830 --> 00:15:34,330 At around 18 months to two years old, this seems to happen or where a previously healthy human baby starts to wither away and become less itself. 137 00:15:34,330 --> 00:15:41,770 The Stories of the Changelings. Here's a typical changelings story, which has got some quite nice comic elements in it. 138 00:15:41,770 --> 00:15:47,200 It's some Scotland and it's called Johnny in the Cradle. And it tells us what happens when you're changing. 139 00:15:47,200 --> 00:15:53,440 Baby is left to its own devices. Here's Brian McMahon again. 140 00:15:53,440 --> 00:15:56,290 Johnny at the Cradle. 141 00:15:56,290 --> 00:16:04,280 A man and his wife were not long married and they had a week, Kitty, called Johnny, but he was always crying and never satisfied. 142 00:16:04,280 --> 00:16:12,290 There was a neighbour near a tailor and he came to Market Day and Johnny was I greeting or crying and never growing. 143 00:16:12,290 --> 00:16:18,630 And the wife wanted to get a day at the market, so the tailor said he'd stay and watch what Johnny? 144 00:16:18,630 --> 00:16:23,550 So he was sitting sewing by the fire and a voice said. 145 00:16:23,550 --> 00:16:33,180 Is my mother and my father away? He couldn't think it was the baby speaking, so he went and looked out of the window, but there was nothing. 146 00:16:33,180 --> 00:16:38,310 And he heard it again. Is my mother and my father away? 147 00:16:38,310 --> 00:16:44,370 And there it was sitting up with its we hands gripping the side of the cradle. 148 00:16:44,370 --> 00:16:49,640 There's a bottle of whisky in the press. It says, here's a drink. 149 00:16:49,640 --> 00:16:55,640 Sure enough, there was one and they had a drink together. Then we Johnny wanted a blow on the pipes, but there was not a set in the house. 150 00:16:55,640 --> 00:17:00,110 So he told the tailor to go and fetch a round of straw from the buyer. 151 00:17:00,110 --> 00:17:06,110 And he played the loveliest tune on the pipes through the straw. They had a good talk together. 152 00:17:06,110 --> 00:17:11,540 And the way things said is my mother and my father coming home. And when they came. 153 00:17:11,540 --> 00:17:17,950 That was near the end. Yeah. And the cradle. By this time, the Taylor knew it was a fairy. 154 00:17:17,950 --> 00:17:23,680 They had there. So he followed the farmer into the buyer and told him all that had happened. 155 00:17:23,680 --> 00:17:29,860 Farmer just couldn't bring himself to believe it. So between them, they hit on a contrivance. 156 00:17:29,860 --> 00:17:35,740 They let on that a lot of things had not been sold at the market. And there was to be a second day of it. 157 00:17:35,740 --> 00:17:39,760 And the Taylor promised to come over again to sit by the band. 158 00:17:39,760 --> 00:17:46,830 They made a great stir about packing up and then they went through to the barn and listened to the peephole in the wall. 159 00:17:46,830 --> 00:17:52,780 Is my mother and my father gone, said the wee thing. And the mother could just hardly believe her ears. 160 00:17:52,780 --> 00:17:58,650 But when they heard the piping through the corn straw, they can say it was a fairy right enough. 161 00:17:58,650 --> 00:18:04,080 And the farmer went into the room and he set the griddle on the fire and heated it red hot. 162 00:18:04,080 --> 00:18:09,000 And he fetched in a half bag full of horse manure and set it on the griddle. 163 00:18:09,000 --> 00:18:14,250 And the wee thing looked at him with wild eyes when he went to grip it and put it on the griddle. 164 00:18:14,250 --> 00:18:19,110 It flew straight up the chimney and as it went, it cried out. 165 00:18:19,110 --> 00:18:25,880 I wish I had been a longer with my mother. I had a cancer better. 166 00:18:25,880 --> 00:18:27,950 So, yeah, lots of funny bits in there. 167 00:18:27,950 --> 00:18:34,370 But I can't help but feel the distress of the parents that are left with this child that they don't recognise as their own. 168 00:18:34,370 --> 00:18:42,590 And it's in some ways in that story, it's it's a bit less horrifying that they just thought heating the shovel but wants the baby. 169 00:18:42,590 --> 00:18:49,510 The fairy babies revealed itself, which is off up the chimney, and it doesn't get hurt or tortured in the way that we suspect. 170 00:18:49,510 --> 00:19:00,410 Lots and lots of fairy children or human children who just had developmental deficits of various kinds might have been horribly maltreated. 171 00:19:00,410 --> 00:19:07,970 So in these stories, it seems that the something has to happen in order to reveal the changeling for what it is. 172 00:19:07,970 --> 00:19:14,630 So either in some cases the very baby plays the pipes and it calls its family to them and they have to go back to their 173 00:19:14,630 --> 00:19:23,690 family or they expose themselves by speaking like 80 year old man rather than the toddler baby that is supposed to be. 174 00:19:23,690 --> 00:19:32,030 They need catching out in some way. That's right. Because they're so old, even though they're fairy babies that they know a lot in the in the story, 175 00:19:32,030 --> 00:19:35,780 a brewery of egg shells, which is quite a widespread one. 176 00:19:35,780 --> 00:19:41,510 The old wise woman that the village advises the mother to catch the fairy baby out by 177 00:19:41,510 --> 00:19:48,200 putting some water and some molton some hops in an egg shell and holding it over the fire. 178 00:19:48,200 --> 00:19:52,850 And this catches the fairies attention and it says, what are you doing? 179 00:19:52,850 --> 00:19:55,910 And the mother will say, I'm brewing beer in an egg shell. 180 00:19:55,910 --> 00:20:00,170 And then the fairy says, Well, I've lived for fifteen hundred years and I never seen that before. 181 00:20:00,170 --> 00:20:03,950 Whoops. And that breaks the spell, of course. Yeah. 182 00:20:03,950 --> 00:20:06,410 Which is some comfort to that. 183 00:20:06,410 --> 00:20:15,450 There are other records of women mistreating their babies in an effort to try and get this kind of confession out of them. 184 00:20:15,450 --> 00:20:21,230 And that's altogether darker. It's really horrible when we think of babies being left out, 185 00:20:21,230 --> 00:20:28,220 be exposed to the cold and the wet in the hope that the fairies will just come and swap the human baby back because they can't bear 186 00:20:28,220 --> 00:20:36,740 to see their own babies so mistreated or whether it's to torment them with the hot iron in order to get a confession out of them. 187 00:20:36,740 --> 00:20:42,510 There must have been quite a number of children who suffer them, very likely died. 188 00:20:42,510 --> 00:20:48,270 A children's tradition that we're probably all a bit more familiar with is the idea of a fairy godmother. 189 00:20:48,270 --> 00:20:58,130 Yeah, fairy godmother seemed to turn up from French rather later in to English tradition than these older and darker stories of the fairies. 190 00:20:58,130 --> 00:21:04,700 And of course, the fairy godmother is summoned to the christening of the child and showers. 191 00:21:04,700 --> 00:21:09,020 Blessings upon it. Good luck, beauty, wisdom, courage and so on. 192 00:21:09,020 --> 00:21:12,800 But then, of course, they can be the rather darker fairy godmother as well, 193 00:21:12,800 --> 00:21:18,530 the one who is left out at the christening and comes along and pronounces some kind of curse. 194 00:21:18,530 --> 00:21:24,380 But the idea that there is this connexion on a human child from birth with the fairy world, 195 00:21:24,380 --> 00:21:31,730 that there is a self-proclaimed themselves as as part of the human family, as a godmother in that case is a more recent tradition. 196 00:21:31,730 --> 00:21:39,260 But it's certainly interesting. The good fairy godmother always works Hathaway somehow to counteract the effects of the bad one. 197 00:21:39,260 --> 00:21:41,720 And that makes these stories, I think, more optimistic. 198 00:21:41,720 --> 00:21:49,790 Kids suggests that the kinds of of dark things that might cloud the child's first years don't have to stay with them forever. 199 00:21:49,790 --> 00:21:57,460 That with with help them with courage and perseverance, they can grow out of it and learn to thrive. 200 00:21:57,460 --> 00:22:03,730 Fairies are interested in human children in different ways, their own children seem not to thrive easily. 201 00:22:03,730 --> 00:22:07,840 And they like to steal human infants. Giving birth is difficult. 202 00:22:07,840 --> 00:22:10,900 And human midwives are often summoned to help. 203 00:22:10,900 --> 00:22:18,130 It's not clear whether this is because fairy mothers tend to be stolen human women or whether humans are just better at delivery. 204 00:22:18,130 --> 00:22:21,610 Fairy mothers may miss their own children when it's been exchanged. 205 00:22:21,610 --> 00:22:26,470 Or they may send them to a human to be nursed for a while in return for fairy gifts. 206 00:22:26,470 --> 00:22:35,720 Most widespread, however, are the changeling stories. The healthy human baby is exchanged for puny wailing infant who never grows or develops. 207 00:22:35,720 --> 00:22:41,500 The changeling must be made to betray itself by speaking or exclaiming, then threatened with violence. 208 00:22:41,500 --> 00:22:45,760 The fairy will then flee away up the chimney and the lost child will be restored. 209 00:22:45,760 --> 00:22:50,410 Sometimes there's a time lag between the changeling vanishing and the recovery of the human. 210 00:22:50,410 --> 00:22:58,020 Other feats may have to be performed to win it back. If you've enjoyed this podcast, join us in the next one in this series. 211 00:22:58,020 --> 00:23:05,500 Well, we'll talk about the strange figure of the lonely lady. And if you happen to be able to come to the stage at Gateshead, 212 00:23:05,500 --> 00:23:12,640 there'll be a residency with open rehearsals and actual performances of the artist's new work in progress. 213 00:23:12,640 --> 00:23:17,620 That'll be on April 26, 27 and 28. 214 00:23:17,620 --> 00:23:55,220 Nineteen. Follow us on Twitter at Model Underscore faries, find the page on Facebook or take a look at how websites and modern fairies dot code.