and when his parents asked them to their table, and pressed them to eat, he would squeak out drily: 'B'yta 'nynna b'yta'r cwbwl,' that is to say—'Eating—that means eating all.' " A changeling in Monmouthshire, described by an eye-witness at the beginning of the present century, was simply an idiot of a forbidding aspect, a dark, tawny complexion, and much addicted to screaming.[1]
But a changeling was to be known in other ways than by his physical defects; under careful management he might be led to betray himself in speech or action. A Kirkcudbrightshire tale represents a child as once left in charge of a tailor, who "commenced a discourse" with him. "'Will, hae ye your pipes?' says the tailor. 'They're below my head,' says the tenant of the cradle. 'Play me a spring,' says the tailor. Like thought, the little man, jumping from the cradle, played round the room with great glee. A curious noise was heard meantime outside; and the tailor asked what it meant. The little elf called out: 'It's my folk wanting me,' and away he fled up the chimney, leaving the tailor more dead than alive." In the neighbouring county of Dumfries the story is told with more gusto. The gudewife goes to the hump-backed tailor, and says: "Wullie, I maun awa' to Dunse about my wab, and I dinna ken what to do wi' the bairn till I come back: ye ken it's but a whingin', screechin', skirlin' wallidreg—but we maun
- ↑ Hunt, p. 85; "Y Cymmrodor," vol. vi. p. 175; Rev. Edmund Jones, "A Relation of Apparitions," quoted by Wirt Sikes, p. 56. Thiele relates a story in which a wild stallion colt is brought in to smell two babes, one of which is a changeling. Every time he smells one he is quiet and licks it; but on smelling the other he is invariably restive and strives to kick it. The latter, therefore, is the changeling. (Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 177.) Sir John Maundeville also elates that in Sicily is a kind of serpent whereby men assay the legitimacy of their children. If the children be illegitimate the serpents bite and kill them; if otherwise they do them no harm—an easy and off-hand way of getting rid of them! ("Early Trav." p. 155).
