The Exeter Companion to Changeling Lore

The West Eurasian and Mediterranean Tradition

Davide Ermacora, Simon Young (Herausgeber)

Buch | Hardcover

304 Seiten

2025
University of Exeter Press (Verlag)
978-1-80413-208-1 (ISBN)

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The Exeter Companion to Changeling Lore is the first multi-author study of changelings and the first to centre on West Eurasia and the Mediterranean. Challenging orthodoxy, it shows that changelings are largely restricted to this area and that our changeling records are older than has been appreciated.

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.

Davide Ermacora holds a doctoral degree in anthropology from a dual program run between the University of Turin (Italy) and Lumière University Lyon 2 (France). His work explores religious history, supernatural beliefs, and folkloric traditions across different time periods. He is the author of numerous publications, including ‘Drinking Danger and “Giving Birth” to Snakes in Guðmundar saga D (and Beyond)ì and ‘Afterword: The Milk-Drinking and Milk-Suckling Snake Revisited’. He is currently completing a book on the midwife-witch stereotype. Simon Young is Cambridge-educated with a doctorate from the University of Florence. He has taught at universities in Tuscany for some fifteen years. In 2023 he was runner up for the Katharine Briggs Prize and for the Wayland Hand Prize, and won the Brian McConnell Book Award in that year. In 2023 he also won a Curran Fellowship.

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

Erscheinungsdatum	02.12.2025
Reihe/Serie	Exeter New Approaches to Legend, Folklore and Popular Belief
Verlagsort	Exeter
Sprache	englisch
Maße	156 x 234 mm
Gewicht	615 g
Themenwelt	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Mittelalter
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
ISBN-10	1-80413-208-X / 180413208X
ISBN-13	978-1-80413-208-1 / 9781804132081
Zustand	Neuware