The Changeling and the Eggshells
| Category: | Irish Myths and Legends |
|---|---|
| Props: | A few eggshell halves (optional) |
| Notes: | A changeling is a fairy left in place of a stolen human child. In this Irish telling, a clever mother uses a silly trick to make the fairy give itself away. Use a creaky old-man voice for the changeling's big line. |
Long ago in County Wexford, there lived a woman named Mrs. Sullivan, who had a fine, fat, happy baby boy. He laughed and gurgled and slept like an angel. Then one morning, she went to the cradle, and something had changed.
The baby looked the same, mostly. But his face was wrinkled, like a dried apple. He screamed from morning till night. And he ate! He ate a whole pot of porridge for breakfast, a loaf of bread for lunch, and a bucket of potatoes for supper, and then he screamed for more. But he never got any bigger, and he never once smiled.
Mrs. Sullivan went to see the wise woman who lived at the top of the hill. The wise woman listened and nodded. 'That's not your baby,' she said. 'The fairies have stolen your boy and left a changeling in his place. Some old, old fairy, pretending to be a baby so he can be fed and fussed over.'
'Then how do I get my own child back?' cried Mrs. Sullivan.
'First, you have to make the fairy give himself away,' said the wise woman. 'And the best way to do that is to surprise him. Fairies can't stand a puzzle. Do something so strange that he simply has to say something about it.' And she told Mrs. Sullivan exactly what to do.
So the next morning, Mrs. Sullivan cracked a dozen eggs. She tipped out the yolks and whites, and lined up the empty eggshell halves all along the hearth in front of the fire, two dozen little white cups in a row. Then she filled each eggshell with water and set about stirring them, very seriously, one at a time, with a tiny spoon.
From the cradle, the changeling stopped screaming. He sat up. He watched. He watched for a long, long time.
Finally, in a voice as creaky as an old gate, he said: 'What are you doing, woman?'
'I'm brewing,' said Mrs. Sullivan, without looking up. 'In eggshells.'
The changeling scratched his wrinkled head. 'Well,' he said, 'I saw the acorn before the oak, and I saw the oak before the forest, and I am fifteen hundred years old, and in all that time I never saw anybody brewing in eggshells!'
'Aha!' cried Mrs. Sullivan, spinning around. 'No baby talks like that!' She grabbed the broom, and the changeling shrieked, leapt out of the cradle, and shot up the chimney in a puff of soot, never to be seen again.
And when Mrs. Sullivan ran outside, there on the doorstep, wrapped in a blanket of moss and wildflowers, was her own baby boy, fat and happy and gurgling, as if he'd never been gone at all.
Some say the fairies brought him back because they were embarrassed. Some say they brought him back because no fairy wants to be caught brewing in eggshells. But everybody in County Wexford agrees on one thing: if your baby ever starts talking about the oak trees he remembers, go and fetch your eggshells.
Storyteller tips: the whole story builds to the changeling's line, so slow down for it and give it your oldest, creakiest voice. If you have eggshells, line them up and stir them with a stick while you tell the middle.
"The Brewery of Eggshells" is told across Ireland, Wales and Scotland. This telling follows the version from Thomas Crofton Croker's Fairy Legends (1825).