Editing Changeling (section)

== Folklore ==
Being folklore there are many variations, but they all follow the same pattern: a fairy kidnaps a child and replaces it with something known as a changeling. What the changeling is, how it behaves, how long the parent is stuck with it, and how you get rid of it sooner than that (''if'' you should get rid of it), depends on the version. In some versions it's the fairy's offspring; in others, it's a piece of wood with glamour on it; and in one or two stories it’s a fairy ''elder'' that's gone senile and somehow got convinced that pretending to be the child of medieval peasants is the height of luxurious retirement. Sometimes to get rid of it you throw it in the oven, other times you be abusive to it and the faerie switches the children again because you aren't taking good care of its child. (In practice, this had a nasty tendency of escalating to full-blown infanticide.) In Ireland it was common to dress up boys as girls up to the age of 12 or 13 because their fairies had a preference of kidnapping boys, and items like iron scissors would often be left where the child sleeps to ward off the fairy. The child that is kidnapped is sometimes also called a changeling, but the term usually refers to whatever the fairy left in the child's place. Some people believe that changelings in folklore were a way to explain people having deformities or mental abnormalities (e.g. regressive autism).