Fantastic changelings: liminality and narrative technique in Irish changeling tales

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. See J. Underwood Munro, ‘The Invisible Made Visible: The Fairy Changeling as a Folk Articulation of Failure to Thrive in Infants and Children,’ in The Good People, ed. P. Narváez (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1997), p. 251–283; S. Schoon Eberly, ‘Fairies and the Folklore of Disability: Changelings, Hybrids and the Solitary Fairy,’ in the same volume edited by Peter Narváez (p. 227–250); G. F. Goodey and T. Stainton, ‘Intellectual Disability and the Myth of the Changeling Myth,’ Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 37, no. 3 (summer 2001), p. 223–240; C. Haffter, ‘The Changeling: History and Psychodynamics of Attitudes to Handicapped Children in European Folklore,’ Journal of the History of the Behavioural Sciences 4, no.1 (January 1968), p. 55–61.

2. L. Ballard, ‘A Singular Changeling?,’ Folk Life: Journal of Ethnological Studies 52.2 (2014), p. 137.

3. See R. uí Ógáin, ‘Music Learned from the Fairies,’ Béaloideas 60/61 (1992–1993), pp. 198–199; S. Mac Philib ‘The Changeling (ML5058 [sic]) Irish Versions of a Migratory Legend in their International Context,’ Béaloideas 59 (1991), p. 126.

4. Each motif referenced in this work uses S. Thompson’s classifications in his Motif-Index of Folk Literature (1932–1936).

5. V. Turner, The Ritual Process, Structure and Anti-Structure (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1997 [1969]), p. 95.

6. The term here describes a narrative process, and does not refer to something ‘very good’.

7. T. Todorov, The Fantastic, a structural approach to a literary genre (Cleveland, OH: The Press of Case Western Reserve University, 1973 [1970]).

8. S. Freud, Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 17 [1917-1919], edited and translated by J. Strachey (London: The Hogarth Press, 1975 [1955]), p. 244.

9. M. Windsor, ‘What is the Uncanny?’ British Journal of Aesthetics 59.1 (2019): p. 55.

10. Ibid, p. 60.

11. S. Lem, ‘Todorov’s Fantastic Theory of Literature,’ Science Fiction Studies 1.4 (1974): p. 229; R. Jackson, Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion (London: Routledge, 2009 [1981]), p. 14, 18.

12. M. Course, ‘Changelings: Alterity Beyond Difference,’ Folk Life, Journal of Ethnological Studies 55, no. 1 (2017), p. 18.

13. T. Todorov, p. 41.

14. R. Jackson, p. 20.

15. Ibid.

16. S. Lem, p. 230.

17. S. Lem, p. 229-234; R. Philmus, ‘Todorov’s Theory of “The Fantastic”: The Pitfalls of Genre Criticism,’ Mosaic, An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal 13, no. 3/4 ‘OTHER WORLDS: Fantasy and Science Fiction Since 1939’ (1980): p. 79.

18. R. Jackson, p. 19.

19. Ibid, p. 12.

20. A. Bourke, The Burning of Bridget Cleary (London: Pimlico, 1999), p. 206.

21. See D. Ó Giolláin’s obituary in Folk Life 56:1 (2018): 62/3; https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/04308778.2018.1450705; S. Mac Philib, Iarlaisí Símhalartú Páistí i mBéaloideas na hÉireann (Dublin: MA Thesis, University College, 1980).

22. See M. Briody, The Irish Folklore Commission 1935–1970: History, Ideology, Methodology, ‘Studia Fennica Folkloristica’ 17 (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2007) for more details on this eminent institution.

23. I have included in this category tales that feature the changeling being burnt, whether it be with fire, a red-hot shovel or with boiling water.

24. See Á. O’Neill, ‘The Fairy Hill is On Fire! (MLSIT 6071): A Panorama of Multiple Functions,’ Béaloideas 59 (1991), p. 189–196; and A. Robitaillié, ‘The Bagpipe Player in the Cradle, an Irish Changeling Motif,’ Folklore 128.4 (2017), p. 376–395.

25. See C. Mac Cárthaigh, ‘Midwife to the Fairies, The Irish Variants in Their Scottish and Scandinavian Perspective,’ Béaloideas 59 (1991), p. 133–143.

26. L. Dégh, ‘Is There a Definition for the Legend?,’ Legend and Belief: Dialectics of a Folklore Genre (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2001), p. 23–97.

27. S. Thompson, The Folktale (New York: The Dryden Press, 1951), p. 8.

28. R. Christiansen, The Migratory Legends, A Proposed List of Types with a Systematic Catalogue of the Norwegian Variants, FF Communications 175, (Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1958), p. 4.

29. Ibid, p. 109.

30. L. Dégh, p. 52.

31. B. Almqvist, ‘Irish Migratory Legends on the Supernatural: Sources, Studies and Problems,’ Béaloideas 59 (1991), p. 30.

32. L. Gregory, Visions and Beliefs of the West of Ireland, first series (London: The Knickerbocker Press, 1920), p. 208–209.

33. L. Honko, ‘Memorates and the Study of Folk Beliefs,’ Journal of the Folklore Institute 1.1/2 (1964), p. 10.

34. See M. Aguirre, R. Quance & P. Sutton, Margins and Thresholds, an enquiry into the concept of liminality in text studies (Madrid: The Gateway Press, 2000) for a theoretical discussion of the concept.

35. M. Course, p. 15.

36. M. Aguirre et al., p. 68.

37. Another account notes: ‘these “journeymen”, as they were called, were quite common up to about fifty years ago.’ (E. O’Toole, ‘A Miscellany of North Carlow Folklore,’ Béaloideas 1, no. 4 (1928), p. 324–325).

38. J.-M. Doulet,Quand les démons enlevaient les enfants, Les changelins: étude d’une figure mythique (Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 2002), p. 254–261.

39. J. Lindow, ‘Changelings, Changing, Re-Exchanges: Thoughts on the Relationship Between Folk Belief and Legend,’ in Legends and Landscape, edited by T. Gunnell (Reykjavik: University of Iceland Press, 2008), p. 225.

40. K. Danaher, The Year in Ireland (Cork: Mercier Press, 1972), p. 207.

41. A. H. Bolstad Skjelbred, ‘Rites of Passage as Meeting Place: Christianity and Fairylore in Connection with the Unclean Woman and the Unchristened Child,’ in The Good People: New Fairylore Essays, edited by P. Narváez (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1997), p. 215–223.

42. P. Kennedy, Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts (London: Macmillan, 1866), p. 84–89.

43. See for instance, L. Wilde, ‘The Fairy Changeling,’ Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms, and Superstitions of Ireland, vol. II (Boston: Ticknor & Co., 1887), p. 89–90.

44. G. Beer, ‘Windows: Looking in, Looking out, Breaking through,’ in Thinking on Thresholds, the poetics of transitive spaces, edited by S. Mukherji (London: Anthem Press, 2011), p. 4.

45. P. Lysaght, ‘The Banshee’s Comb (MLSIT 4026): The Role of Tellers and Audiences in the Shaping of Redactions and Variations,’ Béaloideas 59 (1991), p. 80.

46. This motif that I have termed ‘theft through the window’ does not seem to appear in Thompson’s classification. It could be added under motif number F321.6 ‘Passer-by intercepts child stolen by fairies through the window.’ S. Ó Suilleabháin, in his Handbook of Irish Folklore, mentions that ‘going through an opening’ was considered a magical act (Handbook [Dublin: Educational Company of Ireland, 1942], p. 19).

47. M. Course, p. 14.

48. Bean Ultach, in Irish, is a synonym for a wise woman or one skilled in magical practices, a witch.

49. A. Bourke, p. 107.

50. T. Todorov, p. 25.

51. G. Millet & D. Labbé, Le Fantastique (Paris: Belin, 2005), p. 10–11 (the translation is my own).

52. P. Alderson Smith, W. B. Yeats and the Tribes of Danu (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe,1987), p.108.

53. L. Honko, ‘Empty Texts, Full Meanings: On Transformal Meaning in Folklore,’ Journal of Folklore Research 22.1 (April 1985), p. 39.

54. A. Bourke, p. 205.

55. Ibid, p. 54, 135.

56. Ibid, p. 136.

57. T. Farmar, Patients, Potions, and Physicians: A Social History of Medicine in Ireland 1654–2004, (Dublin: A.& A. Farmar, 2004), p. 141.

58. A. Bourke, p. 164-165.

59. M. Nandorfy, ‘Fantastic Literature and the Representation of Reality,’ Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 16, no. 11 (1991): p. 111.

60. Sir W. Wilde, Census of Ireland Report (1851), Part V, vol. I, 455, quoted by K. Danaher, The Year in Ireland, 123.

61. L. Röhrich, ‘The Quest of Meaning in Folk Narrative Research,’ in The Brothers Grimm and Folktale, edited by J. M. McGlathery (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1991), p.8.

62. This translates as: ‘when the shovel was reddening, the two (changelings) got out of the cradle and cleared off.’

63. W. B. Yeats, Uncollected Prose, eds. J. P. Frayne and C. Johnson, vol. 2 (London, Macmillan 1975), p. 277.

64. J. Lindow, p. 224.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a visiting fellowship at the Moore Institute, National University of Ireland, Galway.