"Changeling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... returned to our business, but when the mother put her arms around the body of her son, it turned out that it was only a straw bolster, no heart, no guts, nothing! Of course the witches had swooped down upon the lad and put the straw changeling in his place! Believe me or not, suit yourselves, but I say that there are women that know too much, and night-hags, too, and they turn everything upside down! And as for the long-haired booby, he never got back his own natural color ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... they often sneaked into a house and snatched a child out of the cradle. In place of the stolen baby, one of their own wizened children was laid. That was the reason why many a poor little baby, that grew puny and thin, was called a "wiseel-kind," or changeling. When the sick baby could not get well, and medicine or care seemed to do no good, the mother thought that the goblins had taken away her ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... these years of patient suffering, she wanted him for herself. It was neither religion nor morality that drove her to her final decision, but a thing far stronger: her passionate instinct to possess the son of her body. Even if she were to lose him, to rescue no more than the changeling that she had always known, she could not bring herself to share him with any other woman on earth. He was hers and hers alone. She did not know if she were right. She did not care if she were wrong. The decision formed itself inexorably in her mind. She could only obey it. Gabrielle, ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... the smith at work, and the poor man told him all about his trouble. The old man said, "It is not your son you have got; the boy has been carried off by the Dacorie Sith (the Fairies), and they have left a sibhreach (changeling) in his place." Then the old man told him what to do. "Take as many egg-shells as you can get, go with them into the room, spread them out before him, then draw water with them, carrying them two and two in your ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... 15.—Old England is no changeling. It is long since I travelled this road, having come up to town chiefly by sea of late years, but things seem much the same. One race of red-nosed innkeepers are gone, and their widows, eldest sons, or head-waiters exercise hospitality in their room ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
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