Changeling

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In the superstition of the European Middle Ages, the changeling was an infant (outdated: "bellows"), who was slipped into a woman who had recently given birth by a demonic being in exchange for her own child with the intention of harassing and harming people. In non-Christian beliefs, the changeling was begotten by druids , dwarfs or elves and pushed under. According to the stories, they took care of their species conservation, for which they wanted to have well-formed offspring like humans. The changeling in popular Christian belief was a child of witches or even the devil . The devil was particularly interested in unbaptized children because they were denied the kingdom of heaven and could keep them. The frightened mother, in turn, saw baptism as the best protection against a changeling.

The term changeling , which stands for the evil and the uncanny, appears for the first time at the beginning of the 11th century. The practice, according to which the so-called disabled or deformed children were often mistreated or killed, experienced its climax at the same time as the witch hunt from the 15th to the 17th centuries and continued into the 19th century.

Probably the earliest notions of children being put under the hood in Europe can be found among the cocky, spooky, but not yet malicious spirits of Celtic and Germanic mythology , whose tradition lives on in numerous fairy tales and legends . Most of the mythical stories have come down to us through written collections from the 18th and 19th centuries. Similar myths are also known from other parts of the world.

Legends and fairy tales

Nature spirits have identifiable character profiles. Behind them is the widespread belief in magical powers in nature and in an earlier bodily experience of them. Experience reports of concrete situations lost their individual traits over time and, using stylistic and content-related laws, passed in an abstract form into the narrative tradition of simple legends and complex, structured fairy tales.

Child-swapping legends

Nordic trolls guard a stolen beautiful human child. Illustration by John Bauer , 1913

The Roman forest god Silvanus is said to have behaved hostile towards the women who had recently given birth, but is not associated with child swapping. Medieval interpretations that see him as a forest spirit and water demon and thus consider him a forerunner of the changeling creatures north of the Alps are now considered questionable. They were an attempt to make the belief in changeling appear old, because Silvanus was equated with the incubus , which attacked people in nightmares. This demon, his female counterpart was called succubus , mated with a woman at night, whereupon the semen from the devil was transmitted to her and she gave birth to a changeling.

Lilith was originally an ancient Babylonian goddess and later sank into a night ghost. As such, in medieval Jewish texts she is considered the devil's mother who steals and kills children by sucking blood from them. She tried to make the newborn boys weak and sick from the eighth day and the girls from the twentieth day. The characterization as a child swapper does not appear in this idea, even if the later Christian perspective suggested the same. Some typical forms of changeling sagas can be traced back to the time the Edda was created and thus carefully dated between the 9th and 13th centuries. There is no evidence of motive origins of the European changeling sagas going back further, even into antiquity.

In the legends, the child swap is generally attributed to the malevolent figure dominating the respective popular belief. Ideas outside of the Christian world of faith are about elves who, in the Nordic world of legends, occasionally steal a child from a woman and put a cuckoo child in front of them . Such mythical creatures, which also include dwarfs and, in Scandinavia, trolls , do so primarily because their own children are so ugly and they would like to take in the beautiful human children. In Celtic mythology , Tylwyth Teg are goblins who occasionally slip under changeling. Known in the northern Spanish mountains in the Asturias region, the Xanas appear as beautiful women who dwell at springs and occasionally exchange human children for their own.

In Eastern Europe, water people (water men) swap children in myths, in Baltic mythology these fairy-like beings, who are also called lucky women or earth women, are called Laumes (singular Lauma, Laumė ), in Slavic mythology Vilen and in Lapland Uldas . The midday woman (Polish połndnica, Czech polednice ) appears in Slavic mythology on hot days around noon in the fields, drives people crazy or paralyzes their limbs. Since she also steals children and leaves changeling, the Sorbs and Czechs who have recently given birth should not leave the house around lunchtime as a precautionary measure. The Brothers Grimm also report something similar about the Roggenmuhme , a grain demon in German legend.

In Lithuanian fairy tales, Laumė replaces a child with a changeling. The Laumė is not related to the divine Laima - even if there is some vagueness - not personally, not even in name. The Lithuanian name laumė leads back to Indo-European * loudh-mā and leudh ("to grow"). Laumė, thus associated with growth, could originally have been a fertility goddess. How the Laumė got its demonic character cannot be explained in language. In the stories she exchanges a child who has not yet been baptized for a broom wrapped in diapers, stove twigs or a changeling ( laumiukas ). Sometimes in fairy tales the cradle is already occupied by a doll at birth, which is now replaced by the real baby. Up to the point of baptism, the child is not given his correct name, but a bad, derogatory name in order to mislead the malevolent forces. In order to keep this dangerous period short, the child is blessed by the midwife immediately after the birth. Sometimes it is unclear in the stories whether the witch kidnaps the real child and not the doll, which in this case would have to be presented as a victim. According to one interpretation, Laumė exchanges the human child for a straw broom, i.e. a large-headed, silent child doll that does not grow. By hitting this fluffy child or pushing it briefly into the oven, the real child should be forced to return. Customs in the area of ​​childbirth are derived from this narrative pattern: To promote the birth, a doll was placed in the cradle and only replaced by the infant after the birth or the name given. There is a tradition passed down, according to which a wrinkled (prematurely born) child should be placed on the baking pusher and pushed three times in silence into the oven. The oven is to be understood as the place where the souls of the deceased "merge" with the (doll-like) child who cannot develop because it has not received a soul. According to this understanding, Laumė can be viewed as the goddess of birth.

Designations

In the 16th century, the Latin names for changeling bellows were cambiones, campsiones, campsores and cambiti (from cambare , “to change, to swap”), circumscribed as “rejected children” (subjugated children, infantes suppositi ). “Wechselbutte” or “Butte” was common in Upper German , while “Wechselburt”, “Wechselburt” and “Wechselbalggebürde” were seldom in Low German . In the Scandinavian languages the changeling was called bortbyting, bytesbarn, bytisungar, forbyttet barn and umbetbarn , all of which go back to the verb bytta (“to swap, to change”). The French enfant changé corresponds to the English changeling and changeling child . Polish podciep , also podjeb is made up of pod ("below") and ciepnać ("toss, toss"), accordingly the changeling is called "under chisel " in Silesian . Names that involve the process of interchanging also occur in other Slavic languages .

There are also names that refer to the child's origin: in German, for example, “Zwergwechselbalg”, “Wichtelbalg” and “Wichtelkind”. In the Palatinate dialect, "Elbentrötsch", "Nixkind", "Wasserbalg" and "Wasserbutte" occur, in Bavaria "Hexenbutte", in Tyrol "Nörglein" and "Nörggl". Other designations of origin are trollbyting and viterby (from vitre, vätte , "subterranean") in Scandinavia, in English elf-child and fairy-changeling and in French enfant des fées ("fairy child "). Named after its activities in Saxony and the Palatinate exchange Butte , in Austria the changeover (son of Klagemütterls) and in East Germany, the change woman . Fänggen or Fänken in Graubünden and Vorarlberg and Ms. Viviana from the Fassa Valley are among the wild people in the Alps .

A night woman in Galicia , a white castle woman in Silesia , the witten juffers in the Netherlands , la bête Havette in Normandy , Margot la Fée and Korrigan in Brittany or the witten Wiwer in northern Germany were also accused of swapping children. In a Gotland court book from 1690, underbyggarna are also mentioned, the Poles know mamuny, boginki and biegonki . "Koblickskind" (Koboldskind) and especially in Northern Germany " Kielkropf ", which goes back to Old High German chelckropf, chelchropf and kielkopf , refer to the demonic or magical properties .

Changeling properties

In the stories the changeling is often characterized contradictingly. He appears in the form of a child, but with the face of an old man. Compared to children of the same age, the changeling is usually much smaller, but sometimes much larger because it has a thick body with clumsy limbs. He has lagged behind in his development or is so deformed that he hardly resembles humans. Mostly boys are exchanged, stories from girls are rare. Even if he looks small and weak, he has an excessive appetite and devours as much food and drink as several adults together. According to some accounts, he eats whatever he can find, including frogs, mice, raw fish and pig feed.

The changeling spends most of his time in bed, occasionally crawling around the room and crouching in a corner. He is lazy, stupid, malicious, dirty, screams and makes incomprehensible noises. On the other hand, he is skillful and only pretends to be stupid to annoy people because in truth he is clever and skillful. Although he learns to speak very late or never, he is not deaf and dumb. In most cases he does not live long (up to 18 or 19 years), but sometimes he can live several lives (as a court or house spirit). In an Upper Lusatian legend it says:

“The child grew, but it was very stupid and stayed nowhere other than in its hole that it had dug out near the stairs. But when everyone was gone, it crept up and down the walls. The changeling died at the age of eleven. "

In order to make him disappear, on the one hand, drastic torture methods are used in the stories: he is held over the fire, dipped in cold or hot water, beaten or stabbed with needles. This is intended to attract his true parents. On the other hand, the changeling is sensitive to sensitivity: if it succeeds in eliciting a laugh through astonishment, it disappears. Or you just take him away. In a changeling ballad from the Kuhländchen this happens with sheer violence: "He took the changeling by the hair and hurled it over the table."

Types of European changeling sagas

The European changeling sagas consist of two main groups. In one the process of exchange is described, in the other the changeling reveals its true nature. The latter group contains a "verse of wonder" through which the changeling reveals itself if it has previously been astonished by an unusual sight. Other names are "old verse" or "old age" because the changeling feels obliged to betray his old age. In such a way made to talk or laugh, it is possible to force the changeling to surrender the right child. Verses of wonder can also contain sagas without changeling.

Apart from the various astonishing means, a guide is required who has the knowledge in the use of these means. The following act as advisors: neighbors and clever (old) women, old wise men, hikers who have asked for a place to sleep for the night, and clergy. The sagas are divided into:

Eggshells on the stove : The guide recommends placing as many eggshells as possible on the stove, on the floor, in front of the child or elsewhere. Occasionally, more detailed instructions about the type and number of eggshells are added. They must be kept for a certain period of time beforehand, laid out on a certain day or piled high.

Brewing beer in an eggshell is a variant in northern Germany and Scandinavia, which also occurs occasionally in the British Isles and the Netherlands. In fairy tale no. 30 by the Brothers Grimm it says: “A little louse and a flea, they lived together in a household and brewed the beer in an eggshell.” Here the eggshell fits the characters in its size, otherwise the tiny thing is the solution the astonishment of the vessel. Alternative brewing vessels are thimble and nutshell.

A large spoon in a small vessel also amazes the changeling bellows and makes them speak. In Hungary they speak of a large wooden spoon in a small pot, in Scandinavia they stir food in an egg shell with a large spoon. In Iceland, the mixer has a handle that is long enough to reach the kitchen chimney.

The housewife can prepare an unusual sausage from a pig, dog, cat or sparrow. In a Danish legend, the mother cooks black pudding in a cat's skin . The motif is also documented in the other Scandinavian countries. In a legend from Oldenburg , this brings the changeling to the question: “Sausage with skin and sausage with hair? Sausage with eyes and sausage with bones in it? ”The seeds prefer a dog, in England a whole pig is boiled down to make pudding. In the Bohuslän region in western Sweden , the changeling reveals its age: "Now I am so old that I let 18 mothers suckle me, but I have never seen dog pudding."

Putting on shoe soles is a method that is used in Northern Germany and occasionally in the Netherlands. Other inedible items such as small stones, pieces of wood and leather also end up on the plate of the Kashubians . A meager meal can also consist of a small amount. The motif Prepare porridge or groats is about a tiny amount of groats that is cooked in a large pot.

The verses of old age have a fixed structure. Comparisons with forest are frequent. In the Brothers Grimm's fairy tale 39.3, written in 1812, it is said quite simply: "Now I am as old as the Westerwald." Another comparison with which the changeling reveals its great age is the comparison between acorn and oak, as it can be found in the earliest place in the Welsh short story collection Mabinogion (second half of the 10th century). This formula occurs only in Wales and Brittany and is about an oak several hundred years old that the changeling saw in his youth as an acorn in the crown of another tree. A number of other comparisons are derived from this, in some cases only a stunted form remained, for example: "I am now as old as the world."

If the changeling spell succeeds in getting the changeling to speak, it reveals its origin and has to disappear from the human community. In addition to the verse of wonder (verse of old age), there is also the consecration formula for this purpose. Presumably this goes back to one of Martin Luther's table speeches, which was converted into several narrative variants. According to this, the parents cross a river bridge with their child in the cradle when they hear a voice calling "Wilkropp!" From below. The so far mute child answers with “o ho!”, Whereupon the voice asks: “Where are you going?” The child reveals himself: “I want to squat and want to let myself be wailed”. The parents then throw the changeling in the water.

Christian folk beliefs and changeling

The devil exchanges a baby for a changeling. Early 15th century, excerpt from the legend of St. Stephen by Martino di Bartolomeo

The oldest literary evidence for the term "changeling" can be found in a psalm translation by the Benedictine monk Notker III. (around 950-1022), where he rewrote fremediu chint with Old High German wihselinc . From filii alieni makes emergency core uuihselinga iudei apparently meaning foisted children. Hence, this was a well-known concept in its day. In the St. Pauler fragments, Notker uses the word wehselkint .

Eike von Repgow (1180/90 to after 1233) mentions in his legal book Sachsenspiegel an altvil who was declared as a mentally retarded person, probably wrongly as a bisexual person or according to various derivations as a changeling. In Middle High German , the spellings wehselkint, wihselinc, Wechsing, wehsel-balc and wehselkalp occur.

From the 11th century onwards, mental illnesses and physical ailments were increasingly explained as being possessed by the work of demons . Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179) in her magical and natural medicine works regularly traced the properties of living nature back to devils, drudes or witches. The church took over pagan ideas and instead of the old demons allowed devils and witches to act as opponents of the pious people. The exchange of children with elves was reinterpreted accordingly by church teachers.

The cardinal and crusade preacher Jakob von Vitry (1160 / 70–1240) warned in one of his sermons against the chamium ( Middle Latin , probably to cambio , "exchange"), a boy who would suckle many wet nurses and still not grow. Jakob von Vitry wrote sermons for priests who were not so proficient in preaching and recommended that they add a moralizing story at the end for a better understanding for the common people. His story of the changeling ( chamium ) was not intended as a final example, but rather as a testimony to the beginning of the sermon. The message to be conveyed was clear: the existence of the devil, proven in this way, should strengthen the Christian faith. Just as a changeling and devils to the testimony (according testimonia should) exist ecclesiastical authorities, contained other stories that a half-uneaten bread is not a work of the mice, but the devil, and only God can keep in front, for example, the assertion.

Such sermons had far-reaching effects on medieval popular belief and helped make the changeling phenomenon appear not only as an imagined reality, but also as a historically long tradition. The further discussion was about whether changeling was only created by demons, or whether they were demons themselves. The latter view was represented by the Heidelberg theologian Nikolaus Magni von Jauer (around 1355–1435). Thomas von Aquin (around 1225–1274) coined the belief in his influential demonological system that an intercourse between an incubus and a woman produced a changeling. According to his theory, the incorporeal, diabolical spirit can take on a body, but the semen does not come from this body, but from a man with whom the devil had sex in the form of a succubus . As incubus , he transfers this seed, to which he adds his own demonic properties, to the woman. Thus, the devil is "... in carnal intercourse with people ... first succubus, then incubus, so not real father," because generally demons can occasionally take on a body, but have no body of their own and cannot reproduce themselves .

In the early modern period, the Hexenhammer ( Malleus maleficiarum ) , written by Dominican Heinrich Kramer in 1487, became the main work to legitimize the persecution of witches. Up to 1669 there were 29 editions. After the existence of witches had been demonstrated by hair-splitting conclusions and fallacies, the denial of witchcraft had to be relentlessly acted upon, with the numbers of witches killed in Protestant and Catholic areas hardly differing. The work explained the witch hunt mainly with the wickedness of female nature and referred, among other things, to the case of the 56-year-old Angéle de la Barthe, who confessed to dealing with the devil every night in 1275 and was burned alive for it in Toulouse . She is said to have given birth to a monster with a wolf's head and a snake's tail. To feed it, she had to steal small children every night. The case only appears in a 15th century chronicle, but is not mentioned by any contemporary source. Because of this, and because the indictment of the devil's captivity does not fit at the specified time, the report is regarded by some historians as fiction.

Wall painting around 1450 in Undløse Church , Denmark. The devil exchanges a swaddled baby, which is St. Lawrence , to whom the church is dedicated, for a changeling and hands the child over to a demon.

In the English-speaking world, the word for changeling, changeling , appears in 1555. It was used to describe children or adults who had been exchanged in any way without the participation of demons. Another meaning was changeling for people whose mental mood and opinion are constantly changing. In both cases the word originally had nothing to do with popular belief. Only in a dictionary published in the middle of the 17th century does a change in meaning appear in the reference “Idiot, see changeling”. This was the name given to simple-minded women and, secondarily, men who had no firm faith and who were convinced by every false prophet and deceiver. The Anglican Bishop Samuel Parker (1640–1687) located the stupidity of a youth called changeling in his brain function, making him unable to curb his passions and his appetite. In short, for Parker the changeling became an alternative to the puritanical man who kept himself under control .

The dissenter Samuel Portage (1633–1691) brought the devil into play for the first time. In the 1640s and 1650s, religious sects referred to mentally retarded or melancholy people as changelings who were possessed by the devil. Portage belonged to the mystical sect of the Behemists (named after its founder Jakob Böhme ), who came into contact with angels and made a devilish work in everything inexplicable. For behemists, the ideal human condition on earth was achievable and at the same time the presence of the devil was a reality. In the long epic poem about creation, Mundorum Explicatio , Portage wrote about incubi who magically brought their seeds into ancient witches. During the Restoration , the devil was a driving force behind things in nature. Where in medieval faith he had been under the close observation of God, he now developed a certain active life of its own. The devil used the witches because he could not directly produce offspring and created the changelings to bring his diabolical nature among the people. The questions were generally directed to how the devil and the spirits did something; it was not about their fundamentally recognized existence.

A rough list of the physical characteristics is as follows: Changelings are misshapen, have congenital abnormalities such as redundant fingers, consist only of a body without limbs, are dwarfish and in most cases particularly ugly. Changelings have a large misshapen skull, pale complexion, shaggy hair, staring or squinting eyes, and are also weak and sickly. If they had a large goiter , they were considered a keel goiter . Described symptoms of the disease bring to mind hydrocephalus (head of water) or rickets (softening of the bones) that were previously common and caused by a vitamin deficiency . Their psychological characteristics are described as mentally retarded, little or no language skills, lazy, untidy, neglected and restless.

Dealing with changeable bellows

Child with Symptoms of Hydrocephalus . Illustration by Michael Schmerbach in Rudolf Virchow , 1856.

There were various magical defense mechanisms to prevent the infant from being changed. For example, the placenta should be left under the cradle, the child should be asked about their real age or three lights should be lit in the children's room. A helpful precautionary measure seemed to be to place a prayer book, a Bible, or a sheet of such a book by or in the cradle. A cross or a rosary had the same effect. Only when the child was baptized was the danger finally averted. If, however, the devil succeeded in taking possession of the unbaptized children, it was no longer possible to redeem them from original sin . The devil was after such children because he could deny them entry into the kingdom of heaven. Like the children who died unbaptized, the children who were seized by the devil would not come to the damned in hell, but to a specially designated forecourt of hell ( limbus puerorum ), where they were denied the “divine vision”.

If a child was diagnosed as a changeling, Erasmus Francisci recommended in his work Der Höllische Proteus, or Thousand-faced Verstellers (Nuremberg, 1695):

“It is known / that quite a few people immediately threw the changeling on the dung heap / and soon afterwards they will have their real child again. But whether such a thing would be spoken well by the authorities / would be spoken well to any mother / is open: because the circumstances are often very changeable. Therefore, the safest thing is / in such an incident / understanding theologians, along with divine invocation / to greet Raht. "

Woman with cretinism . Illustration in Rudolf Virchow, 1856.

If a changeling could not be exchanged, it was usually killed. One attempt to get the rightful child back was to intimidate the changeling by pouring boiling water over him. In 1654, over a hundred people, including babies and children, were burned in the Silesian town of Zuckmantel because they were considered creatures of the devil. Martin Luther wanted to kill the changeling as well ( homidicidum, "human killing "), since they are just a lump of meat ( massa carnis ) without a soul (table speech 5207 from 1540). After the Prince of Anhalt refused his wish to drown a certain changeling, Luther advised in the same speech no. 5207 that an Our Father pray for the child in the church . There are reports of abused children from the 19th century because they were viewed as devil's hide.

In a pediatric work published in 1472, the doctor Bartholomäus Metlinger named the symptoms of a child with an oversized head, for whom one would today diagnose hydrocephalus , as "changeling". An inexplicable and thus disturbing phenomenon must have a supernatural cause. The first medical attempt to explain the phenomenon of misshapen children was provided a few years earlier, in 1455, by the doctor Johannes Hartlieb, who recognized them as not a demonic being but a sick person and called the physical symptoms bolismus or Latin apetitus caninus ("dog hunger") , constant feeling of hunger because the food travels undigested through the body). For a long time Hartlieb was practically alone with this view. It was not until the surgeon and anatomist Lorenz Heister expressed the opinion in 1725 that a changeling could be a child suffering from rickets . Other clinical pictures were later mentioned that could have had an influence on the changeling images, including cretinism and meningitis .

Historical descriptions

The changeling by Johann Heinrich Füssli , 1780

From the 17th century the scientifically oriented university scholars became interested in the phenomenon of changeling after natural science had been separated from philosophy as an independent discipline. At the end of the 18th century, the scientific debate about the changeable bellows declined. In their place came the wolf children , which the Swedish scientist Carl von Linné (1707–1778) assigned to a special human species called Homo sapiens ferus , and some puzzling Kaspar-Hauser cases. They shared certain characteristics with the changeling that characterized them as social outsiders: a lack of language skills, a form of nonsense or little sympathy, expressionless eyes and restless gaze, uncontrolled behavior, animal eating habits and stereotypical movements.

M. Gottfried Voigt

In Disputationem physicam de infantibus supposititiis ("Scientific investigation of children who are pushed under", Wittenberg 1667), M. Gottfried Voigt systematically summarized the ideas about changeling at the time. First he lists the common names. For the German language, he names "Wechselbutten", "Wechselbutten", "Frßbutten" and "Exchanged children", also in the plural Latin cambiones ("exchanged") and infantes (from non fari who "cannot speak") with the addition of supposititii , because the devil “foisted them” on them. To confirm their existence, Voigt quotes an eyewitness report by Martin Luther. The reformer, convinced of changeling, saw a twelve-year-old child in Dessau who did nothing but sit there and - as he found - to eat a quantity that would feed four farmers. If you touched it, it would scream, if there was a mishap or damage in the house it would be happy, otherwise it would cry. Another child of a farmer near Halberstadt described Luther as so gluttonous that it sucked the breasts of its mother and five wet nurses at the same time and devoured just as much other food. The farmer was advised to take the infant to the neighboring town for further treatment. When he crosses a river with his child, the devil shouts “Kiel-Kropff” from below the bridge, to which the infant answers in a previously unknown language and, when pushed into the water by the farmer, disappears with the devil.

Voigt goes on describing similar cases until he considers the question of existence to be resolved. Then he turns to investigating the causes in Part IV. In the first place he names the incubus as the person responsible , because he creates the fetus in the womb of a witch, helps bring it out through the birth, slips it into another person, takes away the human fetus and brings it to his servants. The being arises from the demonic seed and the mother's blood, the witch (servant of the devil) is involved and guilty as an ally. The purpose is to deceive people, both pious people whose own child he is carrying away and witches who think they are bearing a real child.

According to Voigt, the distinguishing features of children being pushed under are the sucking out of several wet nurses, the immense voracity and incessant screaming. What is striking is a monstrous head the size of an adult human. Changelings cannot or can hardly speak. They are gleeful, and if someone performs a pious act, they are sad. Related to the changeling are elves , which are described as a kind of worms, and homunculi omniscii , which emerged from male semen without sexual intercourse. This is followed by an epistemological discussion in question-and-answer form, which leads him to the conclusion that children who have been pushed under are neither humans nor monsters, because the latter is also based on a natural process of becoming, but not the changeling.

Johannes Valentius Merbitzio

Title page of Biga disputationum physicarum ... 1678

In Biga disputationum physicarum quarum prima de infantibus supposititiis, commonly known as Wechsel-Bälgen altera de nymphis, Germanis Wasser-Nixen ("Scientific investigations of children placed under - changeable bellows - and nymphs - water mermaids", Dresden 1678), Johannes Valentius Merbitzio begins the characteristics of incubi and succubi and to assess their respective abilities. On the question of whether the devil could perform a sexual act with men or women, he names the Jesuit cardinal Toletus (1532–1596) and the Jesuit priest Andreas Schottus (1552–1629) with their followers as personalities who affirm this . Among the doubters he counted among others the doctor and opponent of the witch hunt Johann Weyer (1515 / 16–1588, who in De praestigiis daemonum traced the effects of witches back to natural causes), the historian Petrus Martyr (1457–1527), the Protestant theologian David Chyträus (1530–1600), the doctor and polymath Giambattista della Porta (1535–1615), Franciscus Torreblanca (who dedicated his Daemonologia to the Pope in 1623) and the Italian bishop and scholar Agostino Steuco (1496 / 97–1548). After long explanations, Merbitzio concludes that he himself is convinced of a devil who "with the permission and the most just discretion of God exercises his power and hostilities against any people". Otherwise he also believes that the devil cannot produce a child, but only a dead body and that children who are put under are consequently not people. In addition to the names listed by Merbitzio, Erasmus von Rotterdam († 1536) and Paracelsus (1493–1541) distanced themselves from the casting out of demons, despite a sometimes still mystical way of thinking.

Like Voigt, Merbitzio saw in the changeling a devil incarnate, comparable to God who incarnated in Christ, only that in this case it was not the Holy Spirit but a demon that triggered the pregnancy. Accordingly, Luther's table speech 4513 states that the devil “puts a devil in the cradle instead of the biological children of the parents”. In Luther's view, such children should be killed. Since he always spoke of changeling in the plural, such devilish incarnations seem to have occurred more frequently. There were other devil figures for Luther. So he established “that the Pope is a hooded and incarnate devil.” The reply came from the Italian Franciscan priest Ludovico Maria Sinistrari (1622–1701), who stated that, among other personalities, “the damned heretic Martin Luther” from the association of the Devil with a human being ( ex commixtione hominis cum daemone ).

Historical definitions in lexicons

Changeling shown by a traveler. Around 1612

According to the Bavarian historian Sigmund von Riezler ( History of the Witch Trials in Bavaria, 1896), there is no direct connection between the pagan ideas of ghosts and the belief in witches of the Christian era. The idea of ​​diabolical changeling was brought to the people from the church pulpit from the 11th century onwards and thus differs fundamentally from the popular belief in elves and similar spirits from earlier times. Nevertheless, encyclopedias from the 18th and 19th centuries defined the term "Wechselbalg", contrary to its historical origins, as "Germanic popular superstition".

In volume 53, pages 1078-1084 in 1747, Zedler's Universal Lexikon undertook an extensive attempt to write with a rational argument against the apparently still predominant mystical world of belief: "Changeling, are those children called the witches with the devil should be conceived, and then on other young children stolen by them have put in the place of the unfortunate parents. ”…“ In Peru such children are to be found with little horns on their heads, and among the Turks there is a certain kind of people, called by them Nefesolini , who are produced by Teuffel are believed to be, and are generally black artists. ”The fantastic descriptions are all relegated to the realm of fable, just as Luther's views are justified with the“ superstitious times of that time ”. The article makes it clear that the individuals referred to as changeling are “real people” who are only slightly deformed by nature and strictly excludes the influence of the devil: “even the defenders of changeling admit that the same body is a divine work alone. "

According to Pierer's Universal Lexikon from 1857 to 1865, “according to the beliefs of the Middle Ages, the changeling was a child who was led by a witch and the like. the devil produces u. foisted on a natural child with a woman who has recently given birth, but who is kidnapped. Such children should have large goiters (therefore also keel heads) u. Having heads, being very shapeless, screaming extraordinarily, and the like. grunt, cannot be satisfied with drinking from the mother's breast, remain without a proper understanding and the like. before the 7th, after others before the 18th year. Beatings u. bad treatment of the W should often cause the witches to take their child again, and brought back the real; 2) a misshapen ugly child in general. "

Pierer's Universal Lexikon leaves no mention of the origin of the phenomenon. While Herder's Conversations-Lexicon in five volumes from 1854 to 1857 does not include an entry, the four-volume Bild-Conversations-Lexikon from 1841 devotes a longer section to the changeling, which begins as follows: “Medieval superstition thought of the child of a witch or the like fabulous monster, which was created in dealings with the devil and in unguarded moments pushed into the place of a newborn human child, but this should have been kidnapped for it. Thick heads and bellies, as well as crops, were considered to be the hallmarks of the alleged changeling, which screamed and grunted a lot, was insatiable when sucking on the chest, was never to be understood and was supposed to die early. Every miscarriage was regarded by the common man for it and in the 16th and 17th centuries In the 17th century, very educated people were still convinced of their occurrence. ”The belief in changeling is explicitly assigned to the common people, although it remains unclear who could be meant by“ educated people ”. It is regretted that "the sad delusion (...) may have cost many ugly children their lives before the complete unfoundedness and impossibility of what one thought of changelings was understood by the Enlightenment of the time."

In contradiction to the statements by Voigt and Merbitzio, the predominant entries in the lexicons from the first half of the 20th century assign the changeling unilaterally to pagan folk beliefs. In Herder's Conversations-Lexikon of 1907 it says: "Wechselbalg, in the German popular belief a misshapen dwarf child who is slipped by dwarfs to a woman who has just given birth instead of her own" (Sp. 1431). In Meyers Neues Lexikon (VEB, Leipzig 1964, Vol. 8, p. 642), omitting the entire history of the European-Christian Middle Ages: “Changeling: in Celtic and Germanic superstitions, a misshapen ghost child who is attacked by evil spirits against a newborn child was replaced. "

Non-European ideas

Amulet with a mantra in cuneiform to protect against the Sumerian child-bed demon Lamaštu , who is shown riding a donkey on the other side.

Similar ideas also exist outside Europe. In the Middle Eastern Islamic popular belief, the child-bed demon al-Qarīna, belonging to the jinn, is feared, causing diarrhea and abdominal cramps in children and threatening them with death. There are male and female spirits who father their offspring with each other or with human partners, and a changeling from a spirit, which is called al-mubaddal in Arabic , can be inserted . A misshapen child is called mabdul . In Sudan , because of this danger, mothers should never leave their child unattended for the first 40 days of life.

In popular belief in Iran, the child-bed ghost Āl calls for a number of defensive measures. This being is mentioned in lexicons of the Safavid period , for example in the dictionary Burhān-i-Qātiʿ written in 1651 . A manuscript from the 19th century called Kitāb-i Kulsūm Nane ( Persian , "Book of the woman Kulsum"), which is said to have been written as a parody by a man, is considered an informative work on the ancient customs, regardless of its unclear authorship of women in the household, for which there are hardly any other sources. It mentions some regulations that must be observed to protect pregnant women from oil. There must be about half a saber pulled out of the scabbard, otherwise the oil threatens to come and seize the woman's liver. According to the Kitāb mentioned above, the saber is also used to draw a line on the sides of the house as an apotropaic act against the stealing of the liver. In addition, onions hung over the woman's head can keep the oil away because of their smell. There are changeling stories according to which oil picks up the baby after the birth and leaves a bad child in his place. The most sensitive part of the oil's body is its clay nose. The Āl is also known by other names, in Turkish mythology as Albastı (which brings puerperal fever in a red robe ) and among the Armenians it is called Alḱ . The figure, widespread in the Orient, ultimately goes back to the Sumerian Lamaštu , the oldest known child-bed demon.

Ideas of child swapping also occur among the Chinese and the Indians of North America. The Yoruba in West Africa know a changeling called Abiku . In Algeria , the Berbers believe in ghosts who often steal small children before they are 40 days old and leave a changeling ( mbäddäd ) in their place .

In some regions of central India, a toddler could be considered a bhuta (spirit) before his head was shaved for the first time or an earlobe was ritually stabbed . Children in Bali used to have their teeth filed for such a transition from demonic to human being brought about by an initiation . According to a description at the beginning of the 20th century, a Balinese ritual intended to drive away a changeling was a human-like doll called bajang colong that was thrown away on the side of the road when the baby was three months old. Bajang colong means "changeling". Something similar was understood by reregek : the figure of a beautiful female spirit, the back of which, however, was hollow and which was smeared with white lime. She was thrown into the water three months after the child was born. Extensive ceremonies were required to transfer the baby from a diabolical to a human being, more precisely: to a member of Balinese society.

Literary processing

  • In the Deutsche Sagen collection of the Brothers Grimm (two volumes, 1816 and 1818), the story Wechselkind mit Ruten is found under number 88 , which faithfully reproduces the mythical material.
  • Joseph Georg Meinert (ed.): The changeling. In: Old German folk songs in the dialect of the Kuhländchen . Perthes and Beßer, Vienna / Hamburg 1817, pp. 179–181. A ballad in dialogue form, which has no Germanic origin, but parallels in its Czech region of distribution. In the unusual story, the child who has been replaced is the focus. The boy grows up in a foreign country and returns to his homeland as an adult and finds the changeling in his parents' cradle: "You are lying in my cradle / where I should be inside." He takes the changeling and throws it out. The ballad belongs less to the folk tales than to the sermon stories in which the devil is in the background.
  • Carinthian legend: Farmer Posch and the changeling.
  • ETA Hoffmann's fairy tale: Little Zaches called Zinnober
  • Selma Lagerlöf : The changeling. In: The most beautiful sagas and fairy tales. 7th edition, DTV, Munich 1992
  • Christine Lavant : The changeling. Otto Müller, Salzburg 1998, ISBN 3-7013-0983-3
  • The changeling in Irish fairy tales of 1826.
  • In traditional by the Brothers Grimm German Tell a changeling which is often appropriate Kiel goiter before a miss-faceted, water-headed child.

literature

  • Walter Bachmann: The unfortunate legacy of Christianity: the changeling. On the history of curative education . Giessen 1985, ISBN 3-922346-13-8
  • Elisabeth Hartmann: The trolls in the legends and fairy tales of the Scandinavian peoples. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart / Berlin 1936
  • Gisela Piaschewski: The changeling. A contribution to the superstition of the northern European peoples. Maruschke & Behrendt, Breslau 1935
  • Gisela Piaschewski: Changeling. In: Hanns Bächtold-Stäubli , Eduard Hoffmann-Krayer (Hrsg.): Concise dictionary of German superstition . Volume 9 (1941), Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1987, Sp. 835-864.
  • Robert Wildhaber : The old verse of the changeling and the other old verses. (FF Communications No. 235) Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, Helsinki 1985

Web links

Commons : Changeling  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Changeling  - Sources and Full Texts
Wiktionary: Changeling  - explanations of meanings, origins of words, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Elisabeth Hartmann, 1936, pp. 8, 14
  2. ↑ Gisela Piaschewski, 1935, p. 55
  3. ↑ Walter Bachmann, 1985, pp. 164–167
  4. ↑ Robert Wildhaber, 1985, pp. 74f
  5. ^ Lutz Röhrich: The Changeling Ballad. In: Gerhard Heilfurth , Hinrich Siuts (Hrsg.): European cultural entanglements in the area of ​​popular tradition. Festschrift for Bruno Schier's 65th birthday. Otto Schwartz, Göttingen 1967, pp. 177–185, here p. 182
  6. ↑ Norbert Reiter: Mythology of the Old Slavs. In: Hans Wilhelm Haussig , Jonas Balys (Hrsg.): Gods and Myths in Old Europe (= Dictionary of Mythology . Department 1: The ancient civilized peoples. Volume 2). Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1973, ISBN 3-12-909820-8 , p. 187.
  7. ^ Wilhelm Grimm, Jacob Grimm: Deutsche Sagen . Hamburg 2014, p. 134 f.
  8. ↑ Bernd Gliwa, Daiva Šeškauskaitė: The Lithuanian mythical beings Laimė and Laumė and the early ontogenesis of humans. In: Studia mythologica slavica , 6, 2003, pp. 267–286, here pp. 273, 278f
  9. ↑ Gisela Piaschewski, 1941, Col. 835f
  10. ↑ Walter Bachmann, 1985, p. 164f, Robert Wildhaber, 1985, p. 10
  11. ↑ Gisela Piaschewski, 1941, Col. 837
  12. ↑ Gisela Piaschewski, 1941, Col. 839f
  13. ↑ Friedrich Sieber : Nature Tell the Saxon Oberlausitz and its neighboring areas. Verlag der Ostsachsen-Druckerei, Löbau 1931, p. 65; quoted from: Katharina Elle, 2008, p. 238
  14. ↑ Katharina Elle: Strange beings. People with disabilities in the Upper Lusatian folk tales. In: Susanne Hose (Ed.): Minorities and Majorities in the Narrative Culture. Domowina-Verlag, Bautzen 2008, pp. 229–243, here p. 231f
  15. ↑ Ludwig Erk , Franz Magnus Böhme (Ed.): Deutscher Liederhort . Volume 1, Breitkopf and Härtel, Leipzig 1893, No. 12, p. 34
  16. ↑ Robert Wildhaber, 1985, p. 19
  17. ^ Elisabeth Hartmann, 1936, p. 79
  18. ↑ Robert Wildhaber, 1985, pp. 14-21
  19. ^ Robert Wildhaber, 1985, pp. 46, 48, 61, 65
  20. ↑ Gisela Piaschewski, 1941, Col. 858f
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  22. ↑ Paul Piper (ed.): The writings of Notker and his school . Tape. 2. Academic publishing bookstore by JCB Mohr, Freiburg / Tübingen 1883, p. 55, line 28 ( at Internet Archive )
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  24. ↑ Walter Bachmann, 1985, p. 184
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  29. ^ Bernhard Lang: Intermediate beings. In: Hubert Cancik, Burkhard Gladigow (Hrsg.): Handbook of basic concepts for religious studies. Volume 5. W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2001, p. 431
  30. ^ Wilhelm Gottlieb Soldan , Heinrich Heppe, Max Bauer: History of the witch trials . Müller, Munich 1911, Volume 1, pp. 151, 159
  31. ^ Gareth Medway: Lure of the Sinister: The Unnatural History of Satanism . NYU Press, 2001, p. 309, ISBN 978-0-8147-5645-4 .
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  34. ^ Rudolf Virchow : About cretinism, especially in Franconia, and about pathological skull shapes. (Lecture given in the Physikalisch-Medizinische Gesellschaft in Würzburg on May 26th and June 21st, 1851) In: Collected treatises on scientific medicine. Meidinger Sohn, Frankfurt 1856, p. 953
  35. ↑ Erasmus Francisci : The Infernal Proteus, or Thousand-Artifactor. Chapter LXXXIX. The Kielkropff / or changeable bellows. ( online at Zeno.org )
  36. ↑ Rudolf Virchow: Collected treatises on scientific medicine. Meidinger Sohn, Frankfurt 1856, p. 948; also shown in: Kretinismus . In: Meyers Großes Konversationslexikon , Volume 11, Leipzig 1907, pp. 641–643
  37. ↑ Nils Petersen: Mentally handicapped people in the structure of society, diakonia and church . (Heidelberg Studies on Practical Theology) Lit, Münster 2003, p. 59, ISBN 3-8258-6645-9
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  39. ↑ Irina Metzler: Responses to Physical Impairment in Medieval Europe: Between Magic and Medicine. In: Robert Jütte (Ed.): Medicine, Society and History. Yearbook of the Institute for the History of Medicine of the Robert Bosch Stiftung, Volume 18 (reporting year 1999) Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 2000, pp. 9–36, here p. 25
  40. ↑ Gisela Piaschewski, 1941, Col. 862f
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  42. ↑ Walter Bachmann, 1985, pp. 29-46
  43. ^ Emmy Rosenfeld: Friedrich Spee von Langenfeld. A voice in the desert. Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin 1958 (= sources and research on the linguistic and cultural history of the Germanic peoples. New series, 2), p. 273, note 10.
  44. ↑ Walter Bachmann, 1985, p. 115
  45. ↑ Walter Bachmann, 1985, pp. 103-115
  46. ^ Weimar edition, table speech 4513 from the year 1539
  47. ↑ Eckhard Rohrmann: Myths and realities of being different. Social constructions since early modern times . Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2011, p. 66, ISBN 978-3531168258
  48. ↑ "One must not overlook the fact that scholarship may subsequently discover, in analogous or related traits, contact between pagan delusion and later belief in witches , without there being an inner connection between the two." In: Sigmund von Riezler : History of the witch trials in Bavaria. JG Cotta, Stuttgart 1896, p. 23; quoted after Walter Bachmann, 1985, p. 184
  49. ↑ Walter Bachmann, 1985, pp. 187–197
  50. ↑ Keyword: changeling. In: Pierer's Universal Lexicon of the Past and Present . Altenburg 1864, Vol. 18, p. 956
  51. ↑ Keyword: changeling . In: Pictures-Conversations-Lexicon for the German people. Leipzig 1837-1841, Vol. 4, p. 675
  52. ↑ Walter Bachmann, 1985, pp. 162f
  53. ↑ Peter W. Schienerl : Iron as a weapon against demons. Manifestations of belief in its magical power in the Islamic amulet system. In: Anthropos , Volume 75, Issue 3./4, 1980, pp. 486-522, here p. 494
  54. ^ Joseph Henninger: Belief in spirits among the pre-Islamic Arabs . (1963) In: Ders .: Arabica sacra: Essays on the religious history of Arabia and its peripheral areas. Universitätsverlag, Freiburg (Switzerland) 1981, pp. 118–169, here p. 126
  55. ↑ Ahmad Al Safi: Beliefs in supernatural beings. aalsafi.tripod.com, 2001
  56. ↑ Moḥammad Dabīrsīāqī: Borhān-e qāṭeʿ. In: Encyclopædia Iranica , 1989
  57. ^ Wilhelm Eilers : The Āl, a Persian child bed ghost. (Bavarian Academy of Sciences, Philosophical-Historical Class. Meeting reports, year 1979, issue 7) Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Munich 1979, pp. 9f, 46, 59
  58. ↑ Werner Vycichl: The mythology of the Berber. In: Hans Wilhelm Haussig , Jonas Balys (Hrsg.): Gods and Myths in Old Europe (= Dictionary of Mythology . Department 1: The ancient civilized peoples. Volume 2). Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1973, ISBN 3-12-909820-8 , p. 692.
  59. ^ J. Hooykaas: The changeling in Balinese folklore and religion. In: KITLV, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 116, No. 4, Leiden 1960, pp. 424-436, here p. 425
  60. ↑ Brothers Grimm: Wechselkind struck off with rods . In: German legends . 1816 ( online at Projekt Gutenberg )
  61. ^ Lutz Röhrich: Collected writings on folk song and folk ballad research. (Folksong Studies Volume 2) Waxmann, Münster a. a. 2002, p. 50 f.
  62. ↑ One of the seven sagas of the changeling. In: Wilhelm Kuehs: The Saligen. Legends from Carinthia. Volume 1. Hermagoras Verlag, Klagenfurt 2006, ISBN 3-7086-0059-2 , pp. 258-262.