University of Exeter Press
The Exeter Companion to Changeling Lore
The West Eurasian and Mediterranean Tradition
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- 320 Pages
For centuries, people across Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East believed that supernatural beings—fairies, jinn, trolls, or demons—could steal a human child and leave a lookalike in its place. These stories offer fascinating insights into how different cultures made sense of disability, illness, and unexplained transformations.
The Exeter Companion to Changeling Lore is the first multi-author volume dedicated to changelings and the most comprehensive study of these beliefs across West Eurasia and the Mediterranean. Bringing together leading historians, literary scholars, and folklorists, it considers changeling legends from Britain to Armenia and from the Arctic Circle to the Maghreb. Individual chapters uncover new archival material in Hungary, previously undocumented folklore motifs in Ireland, and changeling traditions in countries where they had gone unnoticed—such as Italy and Spain. The book even examines how changeling beliefs have persisted into modern UFO-lore.
Challenging long-held assumptions, this volume overturns the idea that changeling beliefs are to be found in all corners of the globe and that no such tales predate the medieval period. Instead, it reveals that the vast majority of changeling accounts belong to a distinct West Eurasian-Mediterranean tradition, with records stretching back to ancient Greece and Rome. This book is essential reading for folklorists, historians, anthropologists, disability studies and criminal studies scholars, and anyone fascinated by myths, legends, and the supernatural. It concludes with a revised list of changeling motifs, providing an invaluable resource for future research.
Now the first resort for the changeling lore of western Eurasia and the Mediterranean, this brilliantly fascinating (and handsomely produced) volume transforms the subject with an integrated survey of the constituent regions and their traditions, hitherto studied largely in isolation. Sixteen locally-focused essays are oriented by a lucid, systematic and authoritative introduction.Daniel Ogden, Professor of Ancient History, University of Exeter
The changeling tradition may seem a niche area of scholarly study, but this rich and rewarding collection of essays demonstrates how it provides valuable insights regarding the human condition across time. Expertly edited and packed with original insights, this book sets the agenda for future research on the subject.
Owen Davies, Professor of Social History, University of Hertfordshire
The Exeter Companion to Changeling Lore offers an engaging and wonderfully readable exploration of Changelings. Edited by Davide Ermacora and Simon Young, this anthology of meticulously researched essays traces changeling beliefs, narratives, and practices from medieval Iceland, Scandinavia, Ireland and the British Isles to the Mediterranean, Armenia, Iran, and the Arab world. The contributors, all well-known folklorists and historical researchers, examine everything from changeling-related murders to nineteenth-century baby-swap stories, synthesizing a wide range of scholarship and providing a much-needed corrective to the otherwise fragmented state of changeling studies.
Timothy R. Tangherlini, Professor of Scandinavian Folklore, University of California, Berkeley
This is the most comprehensive and up-to-date publication to date on one of the most important and celebrated (and often potentially tragic) of folkloric motifs. It covers the whole range of that in both time and space, in seventeen separate contributions of uniformly high standard. Moreover, unlike many collections of work by different authors on a theme, it makes a harmonious and unified whole, a real advance in knowledge.
Ronald Hutton, Professor of History, University of Bristol
Introduction: Changeling Whats, Wheres, and Whens Davide Ermacora and Simon Young
DOI: 10.47788/VLIC1971
1. The Child Kidnapped through the Window: Considerations on an Irish Changeling Motif Audrey Robitaillié
DOI: 10.47788/TQCM4693
2. English Changelings across the Ages Rose A. Sawyer
DOI: 10.47788/WCBI1292
3. ‘A Little Folk-Lore Is a Dangerous Thing’: Edward Clodd, the Folk-Lore Society, and the Bridget Cleary Case (1895) Stephen Miller
DOI: 10.47788/BFNC2714
4. Medieval Iceland: Changelings on the Margins Andrea Maraschi
DOI: 10.47788/VVYJ7973
5. Scandinavia: Folklore, Families, and Changelings Tommy Kuusela
DOI: 10.47788/CFYX8157
6. Martin Luther and the Evolution of Changeling Lore in German-Speaking Europe Janin Pisarek and Florian Schäfer
DOI: 10.47788/HQGK6901
7. Changelings in Iberian and Ibero-American Folklore Óscar Abenójar
DOI: 10.47788/INHT9632
8. From Alpine Tales to Pirandello’s Fiction: Mapping Changeling Beliefs across Italy Riccardo Castellana and Davide Ermacora
DOI: 10.47788/GWXL3857
9. Burnt in an Oven: An 1803 Changeling Trial in Transylvania Éva Pócs
DOI: 10.47788/JNXH1182
10. ‘Old and Taken’: The South Slavic Changeling Dorian Juric
DOI: 10.47788/INUN1598
11. The Emergence of Changelings in Post-Classical Greece Tommaso Braccini
DOI: 10.47788/HDEW6450
12. Giants, Gluttons, and Blocks of Wood: Changeling Stories in Ukraine and Russia Natalie Kononenko and Alevtina Tsvetkova
DOI: 10.47788/FALD2743
13. Artavazd and the Armenian Changeling Davide Ermacora
DOI: 10.47788/TEEX1921
14. Stoves, Stocks, and Shovels: North American Changeling Beliefs and Murders Chris Woodyard
DOI: 10.47788/FAFC7317
15. Human Changelings in the Long Nineteenth Century: Baby Swaps, Picnics, and Maternity Wards Simon Young
DOI: 10.47788/OJZP8812
16. Missing Changelings? UFOs, Alien Abductions, and Conspiracy Narratives Erik A.W. Östling
DOI: 10.47788/BCJN1097
Epilogue Jean-Claude Schmitt
DOI: 10.47788/LVZC5604