Changelings

CHANGELINGS.

A CORRESPONDENT, to whom I am much indebted for many curious examples of the folk-lore of the people in the -remote districts to the west of Penzance, says, in reference to some stories of fairy changelings--"I never knew but one child that had been kept by the Spriggans more than three days. It was always complaining, sickly, and weakly, and had the very face of a changeling."

It has been my fortune, some thirty or forty years since, to have seen several children of whom it had been whispered amongst the peasantry that they were changelings. In every case they have been sad examples of the influence of mesenteric disease--the countenance much altered -- their eyes glassy and sunk in their sockets--the nose sharpened--the cheeks of a marble whiteness, unless when they were flushed with hectic fever--the lips sometimes swollen and of a deep,- red colour, and small ulcers not unfrequently at the angles of the mouth. The wasted frame, with sometimes strumous swellings, and the unnatural abdominal enlargement which accompanies disease of mesenteric glands, gives a very sad, and often a most unnatural appearance to the sufferer. The intense ignorance which existed in many of the districts visited by me, at the period named, has been almost dispelled by the civilising influences of Wesleyanism. Consequently, when ascrofulous child is found in a family, we no longer hear of its being a changeling; but, within a very recent period, I have heard it said that such afflicted children had been "ill-wished."