UDSKRIFT 🔗
1
00:00:06,320 --> 00:00:11,570
Modern Fairies and Ladies podcast series one.
2
00:00:11,570 --> 00:00:22,130
So for their children and. Hello, this is Faye Heald 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 first 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
Load full transcript
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.