Review for The Sisters of the Winter Wood by Rena Rossner Combined with an Original Article: Unique by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Review for The Sisters of the Winter Wood by Rena Rossner

Combined with an Original Article: Unique

by Karen S. Wiesner 

  Beware spoilers! 

Published in 2018, The Sisters of the Winter Wood is the debut novel of literary agent Rena Rossner, who lives in Israel. I really don't know how to categorize this unusual story. It's a blend of magic and reality, fantasy, folklore, cultural history (specifically Jewish mythology). As to whether it's young adult, I'm not certain. Both protagonists are teenage girls, but I don't know if the intention was for it to be read only by young adults. I was looking for a new audiobook and this one came up, promising to be something atmospheric and supernatural. It was both. The narrator, Ana Clements, was the perfect choice for this material, and I'd go so far as to say that no one else could have done it better. 

In this tale, 17-year-old Liba and her 14-year-old sister Laya live with their parents in a remote village. They've been raised in the forest in a very insular way by their Jewish father and converted-but-never-truly-accepted mother. When their parents are forced to leave the girls at home because the roads aren't safe in order to visit their dying grandfather, the sisters are thrust into secrets and discoveries they could never have imagined. Liba, like her father, has the ability to transform into a bear. Laya and her mother can become swans. Neither girl ever had a clue about this prior to their parents leaving. Overnight, the entire world changes for them as dark forces gather and the village is plunged into danger. 

In ways, I found it unfortunate that the author chose to reveal the shapeshifting abilities when the girls are teenagers. So much of this book was overwhelmed with the angst and ardor of two young, impressionable girls who long to explore their sensuality, despite the environment they were raised in. While I found the cultural aspects of the story intriguing, these characters were painted as good, responsible daughter (Liba) and stupid, flighty daughter (Laya). Combine that bland ordinary (in my opinion anyway) with the persecution of a people wherever they go, seemingly, and it strongly began to feel like there was a wider agenda being served up in this chill, supernatural setting. I was looking for the extraordinary, so for that reason, I found myself mildly disappointed when the tone of the story seemed to change to something much more mundane, like bigotry. 

Despite that, as the kiss of winter begins making itself known in my area of the world along with the promise of Thanksgiving and Christmas, like the unmistakable scent of cinnamon and pine needles in the air, I couldn't stop thinking about the deeper issues this story undergirds and makes haunting with its icy refrain. 

"UNIQUE" 

Liba and Laya live in a world that isn't all that different from the one you and I inhabit. That world and this one seems to want to put everyone in little boxes that may not fit and then persecute those deemed undesirable while they're there. Just like Dr. Seuss's Sneetches story, this is one of the things in this life that should never be. Inside those shackled boxes, we learn the horrors of judging, racism, prejudice, genocide… The list of monstrous behaviors is endless for those who see themselves as superior to all others, so much so that they commit atrocities on other human beings. When people begin to think of themselves as special--even chosen by God (why is it that so many madmen in the history of the world believe that?)--sometimes they view this as permission to do terrible things to others who they see as different from them. 

We all share similar origin--whatever color our skin is, whatever the culture or community or religion or gender we're raised in. We're also all born with a predetermined appearance (based on what our parents impart to us genetically), and there's very little we can actually do about what we're given in an external sense. Physical attractiveness is little more than subjectivity anyway. Two people will never agree on what makes anyone beautiful, so why are we so fixed on the outside shell of a human being? Frankly, it's all stupid. Make no mistake--the "ugly" and the "lovely" are both given these things at birth; no one chose them or can claim that they had anything to do with their own fortune or curse in that regard. While it's important to take care of ourselves so we're healthy and fit and as attractive as we can be externally, in truth we should simply be more accepting of each other's exterior appearance, our race, our culture--and our own--yet we're not! No generation ever really learns from this fatal flaw in our thinking that seems to be a factory reset from one age to the next. It's completely senseless how human beings create innate separations in classes, races, genders, and religions. What a celebration it could be if only we could rejoice over the differences that make each of us unique! 

It takes a tremendous amount of grace and character to accept our differences. Twice as much to accept others with the same equanimity! That's why it's so important to put the majority of our focus into what can be controlled, what can be changed, what can be built and bloomed and become--the internal aspect of who we are, the person inside, the being we want to be more than anything. That's where true beauty can be refined. The interesting part about that is that inner beauty can transform the outer shell. A person so remarkable and loving can be physically astounding, even if realistically the outer package may not suggest it can be so. True inner beauty is also the lasting part of a person's identity. Inner beauty transforms every aspect of our being, including our perspective of the world around us. 

I don't believe I'm unique in that I want to be remembered for the person I was in life, for inner beauty and goodness. That's all that really matters in the end. Those are lasting things that can live on even when I'm gone. We can actually make a mark on this world in that way. But it requires us to let go of vanity and accept who we are, where we come from and how we were raised, even what we look like. It requires not seeing ourselves as superior to all others and to instead see everyone as unique and worthwhile. 

Focused on what matters, build a life that has purpose and meaning. It will outlive you, I promise. You'll never regret that part, and it is what will give you joy, satisfaction, and ultimately contentment. The only person you have to give an accounting to while in this life is yourself. So be the inner person you want to be without shame or regret. It will reflect on the exterior. That is something no one can take away from you. 

Never mind the irony that I'm suggesting that you read The Sisters of the Winter Wood (a very Jewish story, at least on the surface) at this time of year--whether the Thanksgiving or Christmas holiday--when most hearts turn to being mindful of what we have. During this time, we seem to reflect more on the things that matter. To seeing the good in ourselves and in others, to being the hope, benevolence, and goodwill that we want to spread to all. Ultimately, this story I'm reviewing this week will make you realize the heart of what's important in life and the role each of us play in the outcome of good and evil. Our choices can impact everything in and around us. Be a change and influence for good. Be the goodwill and benevolence you want to see. Be unique. Above all, remember that the differences in each of us can become the very celebrations that make life worthwhile. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website and blog here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Anti-Santas

Nowadays almost everybody has heard of Krampus, the goatlike humanoid creature from central Europe who accompanies Saint Nicholas to punish naughty children:

Krampus

Yuletide legends of various regions, however, include many other scary figures who perform this "bad cop" function in contrast to Saint Nicholas's "good cop" role of bringing gifts to well-behaved children. The Christmas gift-giver, apparently, has often been split into two entities so that Santa can be conceived as kind and generous rather than punitive. Not that our modern concept of him is totally free from the latter trait: "He see you when you're sleeping. . . .he knows when you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness' sake." In Germany, Knecht Ruprecht (who might have evolved from a folkloric image of the Devil, according to some scholars) leaves coal and switches for bad children or sometimes hits them with the bag of ashes he carries. The Dutch Zwarte Piet ("Black Pete"), perhaps originally a kobold or a captured demon, sometimes distributes sweets to good children as well as switches to bad ones but often serves mainly as the "bad cop" to leave the benign role to Saint Nick. "Black" could refer to the soot covering his body, but some traditions depict him as racially Black, a detail that has made this Christmas henchman controversial. Belsnickel, also from Germany, combines gift-giving and punishment-dispensing functions. He traveled to Pennsylvania with German immigrants. In France, Père Fouettard carries a whip to punish naughty boys and girls. One legend gruesomely describes his origin as a butcher who killed and chopped up children; after repenting, he had to do penance by becoming the assistant of Saint Nicholas.

This Wikipedia entry discusses several dark or ambiguous personages who accompany Saint Nick in European legends:

Companions of Saint Nicholas

THE FRIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS (2023), an entertainingly written and profusely illustrated book by Jeff Belanger, collects the lore of a wide variety of "Yuletide monsters."

The Fright Before Christmas

In the Zwarte Piet tradition, some folksongs warn that as the assistant of Sinterklaas (Saint Nicholas) he may carry off naughty kids in his sack to Sinterklaas's workshop, where they're forced to toil for an indefinite period of servitude. Coincidentally, before having come across this bit of lore, last week I posted this twisted-Santa flash fiction on my website:

You Better Watch Out

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Scary Solstice

I recently read a lavishly illustrated book about midwinter folklore, THE FRIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS, by Jeff Belanger, featuring Krampus, the Yule Cat, Belsnickel, and many other Christmas-season monsters; however, it also covers some benevolent creatures such as La Befana, Saint Nicholas, and of course Santa Claus. Terrors lurk in the longest, darkest night at the coldest time of year. In the past, telling frightful tales at Christmas was a British tradition. Even now, a popular Christmas song mentions "scary ghost stories" along with caroling in the snow. Dickens's A CHRISTMAS CAROL is just the best known. Our preindustrial ancestors recognized the frightening aspect of midwinter; that's why the lights, fires, bells, feasting, and evergreens exist in the first place. They ward off the darkness and keep the demons at bay. Some of the Yuletide boogeymen used to serve as shadow counterparts of Saint Nicholas, punishing naughty children while he rewarded nice ones, in a sort of bad cop / good cop partnership.

Nowadays we joke about getting coal in stockings from Santa if we haven't been "good" (sometimes with the contemporary angle that coal might be a reward instead of a punishment when energy costs rise). Saint Nick's old-style sidekicks or substitutes, though, would beat naughty children with sticks, haul them away in sacks to an unspecified fate, or eat them. On the other hand, if you're lucky you might get a visit from the Italian witch Befana, who may sweep your house in addition to leaving gifts for children. The animated film THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS beautifully highlights the traditional solstice ambiguity of the festive combined with the monstrous. Likewise, in Terry Pratchett's HOGFATHER Death himself fills in for the Hogfather (Discworld's Santa) when the latter is temporarily unavailable.

A long time ago in an online writing group, I read a story about an alternate world in which Santa is a frightening figure who comes down the chimney at midwinter to perpetrate terrible acts. From a certain point of view, a mysteriously omniscient man who constantly watches you from afar and sneaks into your house in the middle of the night regardless of locked doors DOES sound sinister.

Ellen Datlow's new anthology CHRISTMAS AND OTHER HORRORS explores the dark side of the winter solstice in a variety of stories featuring Christmas and other seasonal celebrations and customs. Some of the horrors are based on actual folklore, others created by the individual authors.

Speaking of HOGFATHER, here's a link to my favorite quote from the entire Discworld series, Death's explanation of why human beings need myths and fantasies:

We Need Fantasy to Be Human

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Folklore 101

At this year's ICFA, I heard a paper by folklore scholar Jeana Jorgensen and was so impressed that I immediately ordered her book FOLKLORE 101. This isn't a book OF folklore, but an introduction to the study of folklore. Jorgensen explains her field in a breezy, colloquial style but also includes an extensive bibliography of books for further, deeper exploration, should readers be so inclined. She defines folklore as "informally transmitted traditional culture." It's shared and passed on outside of official, institutional structures. Thus, while an established religion isn't folkloric, folk religion does exist, e.g., wearing saints' medals for protection or burying a statue in the yard to ensure a quick sale of one's house. Variation and flexibility characterize folklore, whereas an institutional product such as a printed novel by a known author has a fixed form (unless the author or film director releases a revised official version). Tradition need not stretch back centuries or even years to be "traditional." Moreover, the "folk" don't mean just people in preindustrial eras or present-day tribal societies. Folk groups can include hobby clubs, coworkers in an office, people serving in a branch of the military, online virtual communities, even the members of a single family—any group that shares a common culture. It surprised me to read about "personal narratives" as a folklore category. Did you know the retelling of an anecdote about your wedding day constitutes folklore within your family's tradition? Coincidentally, earlier this week I read an article about the top ten stories from their own lives people tell over and over. (Frustratingly, the article didn't list the ten topics.) Older people don't repeat stories mainly because they're forgetful; they do it because those anecdotes hold vital meanings they want to pass on to the younger generations. Just as we all speak prose, we all belong to folk groups and practice folklore.

I ordinarily think of folklore mainly in terms of verbal culture, such as songs, tales, legends, and anecdotes. Proverbs, jokes, and slang also fall into that general area. As Jorgensen's book explains, however, folklore includes many more categories, e.g., foodways, rituals, superstitions, arts and crafts, dance, holiday customs, folk medicine, internet memes, and various other human activities.

Is fan fiction folklore? Yes, although her book mentions it only once, in passing. It's produced informally, outside official, commercial structures. It exhibits variation and is communicated within a folk community. The fanfic community has its own traditions and dialect, e.g., the invention of the term "slash" for same-sex romance between fictional characters. Filk music is certainly folklore. Songs can be set to either composers' original tunes or existing music. The latter can consist of either parody or serious rewriting. The videos made by some fans by combining clips from movies or TV shows would also count as folklore, although they don't come into Jorgensen's book. So material originally produced by official, institutional, and/or commercial sources can become appropriated by folk culture, subject to variation and traditional transmission.

When does a commercial product created by a known artist become folkloric? How old does it have to be? Does it have to be in the public domain? Woody Guthrie's song "This Land Is Your Land" is probably thought of by many Americans as a folk song. Guthrie himself encouraged others to add verses. Nineteenth-century composer Stephen Foster's "I Dream of Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair" was parodied by Bugs Bunny, a commercial song being "filked" by a commercial animated character. Similarly, the tune of the Civil War song "Aura Lea" was used by Elvis Presley for "Love Me Tender." There's a filk song about the Apollo 13 near-disaster sung to the tune of "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." Despite Jorgensen's lucid explanations, I'm still a little fuzzy on the boundaries of "folk" transmission and variation. To cite a shift in the other direction, Jean Lorrah wrote a collection of Star Trek fanfic stories called the "Night of the Twin Moons" series—folkloric variation on a commercial popular culture product. However, her professional Star Trek novels THE VULCAN ACADEMY MURDERS and THE IDIC EPIDEMIC clearly belong to the same fictional universe as her fanfic, although with "the serial numbers filed off," as the saying goes. And the origin of the commercial bestseller FIFTY SHADES OF GREY as thinly veiled TWILIGHT fanfic is well known.

The richly diverse nuances of folk creations in the overall category of songs and stories can be endlessly fascinating.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Creative Fakelore for Fun and Enlightenment

The January-February 2022 issue of SKEPTICAL INQUIRER includes an article by statistical ecologist Charles G. M. Paxton, narrating his experiment of creating an imaginary water monster to masquerade as an authentic legend. He was inspired by an account of an eighteenth-century ghost in London that turned out to be a hoax promulgated in the 1970s. Paxton wondered whether his lake monster could gain similar credence. One intriguing thing about this experiement, to me, is that not only did his invented sightings get retold as genuine by multiple sources, new reports of alleged historical sightings sprang up, independent of any effort on his part.

He decided to create, not a generic sea serpent like Nessie in Loch Ness, but a "monstrous aquatic humanoid." He located it in two freshwater lakes in England's Lake District that, as far as he knew, had no existing tradition of monster lore. Paxton named this creature Eachy and devised a false etymology for the word. He also invented a nonexistent book to cite as a source. After he had an article about Eachy uploaded to Wikipedia, references to the monster began to spread. Although the Wikipedia article on Eachy no longer exists, the Cryptid Wiki has a straightforward page on him or it as a real piece of folklore:

Eachy

The Cryptid Wiki piece mentions the earliest reported appearance of Eachy having occurred in 1873, an imaginary "fact" taken directly from Paxton's material. Moreover, in 2007 the monster sneaked into an actual nonfiction book, a cryptozoology guide by Ronan Coghlan. By January of 2008, Eachy T-shirts were being sold on the internet by someone unconnected to Paxton. At the time the Wikipedia Eachy page was deleted in 2019, it held the status of second-longest surviving hoax on that site.

What do we learn from this story? Paxton proposes that "the tale of the Eachy tells us the dangers of how Wikipedia can be subject to manipulation." As he mentions, however, in more recent years Wikipedia has tightened its standards and introduced more safeguards. On a broader scale, the Eachy hoax demonstrates the danger of how easily recorded history can be distorted or even fabricated from nothing, then accepted as fact. An important caution I'd note, as Paxton also alludes to, is the hazard of uncritically believing what appear to be multiple sources when in truth they're bouncing the same "facts" around in a self-referential echo chamber, repeating what they've picked up from previous sources in endless circularity. That phenomenon can be seen in a field I'm somewhat familiar with, scholarship on Bram Stoker's DRACULA. For instance, after an early biography suggested that Stoker might have died from complications of syphilis, numerous authors since then (in both nonfiction and novels) have accepted without question the truth of the assumption, "Bram Stoker had syphilis, which influenced the writing of DRACULA." The tale of Eachy also reinforces the obvious warning not to believe everything you read on the internet or even in books.

It's fascinating to me that a legend can be invented, disseminated, and perceived as authentic so quickly. Some authorities believe the story of Sawney Bean, the alleged patriarch of a sixteenth-century Scottish cannibal family, first reported in the NEWGATE CALENDAR centuries after the supposed events and repeated as fact in numerous publications since, was just such a fictional legend. And Sawney Bean's tale became deeply rooted in the public imagination long before the internet. In our contemporary electronic age, the chilling scenario in Orwell's NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR comes to mind. If history is whatever is written, what happens when history becomes so easy to rewrite? That's one good reason why, even if it ever became possible to digitize and make available on the web every book in existence, we should still hang onto the physical books. Ink on paper can't be altered at whim like bytes in an electronic file.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Yokai Among Us

If you're looking for unusual, non-European creatures to use as fictional characters, check out the yokai of Japan. This word, often translated "demon," is a broad term covering all sorts of spirits and supernatural beings, not only malevolent, scary entities but also mischievous and benevolent ones. In the animistic world-view of traditional Japanese culture, almost anything can be a spirit or become imbued with one. Human-made inanimate objects a century or more older can become animated (tsukumogami). If you don't treat your personal possessions with respect, they may come to life and take revenge. There are yokai animals, plants, natural phenomena, and personifications of abstract qualities. There's a yokai that looks like a walking paper umbrella and another that blocks travelers' paths in the form of a wall. There's even one that flips your pillow in the night. One of my favorites, the akaname, exists for the sole purpose of cleaning bathrooms. In some versions, failing to keep your bathroom clean will incur its wrath. The shiro uneri is an overused dishtowel, reduced to a dirty rag, that comes to life and attacks servants. Both of these legends, obviously, act as cautionary tales to warn against neglectful housekeeping. There are also legends of more conventionally frightening spirits, such as the ghosts of women who've died in childbirth and demonic wolves that chase people on lonely roads. Japanese folklore is highly eclectic, including not only yokai from centuries-old tradition but also monsters from urban legends that have sprung up within recent decades and even individual writers' original creations incorporated into popular lore. If we lived in the universe of this belief system, we'd have yokai thronging around us almost everywhere.

Some of the best-known creatures often found in fiction, anime, and manga: Kappa, water monsters, often depicted as resembling turtles, that try to drag victims under and drown or devour them; kappa love cucumbers, and you can defeat them by tricking them into spilling water from the bowl-shaped depressions on their heads. Kitsune, which literally means "fox" but also refers to supernatural fox spirits, seductive and often very powerful. Tanuki, likewise a real animal, the "raccoon dog," and also supernatural shapeshifting tanuki with trickster habits. Tengu, crow-like humanoids sometimes rumored to spirit people away.

Here's the general Wikipedia page about yokai:

Yokai

A Wikipedia list of many different yokai and other creatures from Japanese folklore:

Legendary Creatures from Japan

And here's a comprehensive, illustrated website on the subject:

Yokai.com

For an informative, lively, in-depth reference work, see THE BOOK OF YOKAI, by Michael Dylan Foster.

The Studio Ghibli animated movie SPIRITED AWAY, brought to the U.S. market by Disney, showcases a wide variety of yokai.

My recently published light paranormal romance novella, "Yokai Magic," features a talking spirit cat in a contemporary American setting, along with a small menagerie of other yokai:

Yokai Magic

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

The Monsters of Christmas

On Facebook I came across a link to an article about the dark side of the Christmas season in many European folk traditions. It includes some creepy illustrations:

Why Monsters Haunt Christmas in Europe

The page describes Black Piet, Krampus, Belsnickel, and several other horrifying creatures that roam the world around the time of the winter solstice. It quotes some observations by Stephen Nissenbaum, author of my favorite nonfiction book about the holiday season, THE BATTLE FOR CHRISTMAS. Before the nineteenth-century reforms that converted the REAL "old-fashioned Christmas" into a family-centered occasion for giving presents to children, Yuletide was "a disorderly time" dedicated to celebrating the post-harvest leisure period with feasting, drinking, making noise, wassailing (begging from door to door), and dressing up in grotesque costumes. In this period of "misrule," the social order often got turned upside down, with ritual defiance of authority. A tamer remnant of that pattern, mentioned by Nissenbaum, survives in the custom of officers in the British Army waiting on enlisted men on Boxing Day / St. Stephen's Day (December 26), as depicted in one Christmas episode of the TV series MASH.

Works that showcase the scary side of Christmas include the movie NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS and Terry Pratchett's Discworld novel HOGFATHER, in which Death has to substitute for the vanished Hogfather (that world's Santa figure). Not surprisingly, Death's idea of a suitable winter holiday is a bit odd. This book, by the way, has been filmed:

Hogfather Movie

Here's a page devoted to all things Krampus, where you can find, among other features, a list of cities that hold Krampus celebrations:

Krampus

On reflection, it's obvious that grim figures such as Black Piet serve a useful purpose in the celebration of Christmas. If St. Nicholas has a dark sidekick who punishes naughty children, Santa himself doesn't have to bear the burden of the punitive role implied by "he knows if you've been bad or good." Instead, he can be the completely benevolent gift-dispenser.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Changelings

I've just read THE HIDDEN PEOPLE, by Alison Littlewood, a richly textured and deeply disturbing novel about fairy changelings—maybe. We never quite find out for certain whether fairies exist, since the story is told in first person by a troubled, confused narrator. The protagonist, a young Victorian gentleman, travels to rural Yorkshire to investigate his cousin's murder by her husband on the grounds that she'd been stolen by the Hidden People and replaced by a duplicate. Although disdainful of the villagers' superstitious beliefs, the narrator gradually gets drawn in, until he begins to think his own wife might be inexplicably changing. This novel was inspired by the real-life case of Bridget Cleary, whose husband burned her to death as a suspected changeling in an Irish village in 1895. Angela Bourke's THE BURNING OF BRIDGET CLEARY tells the full story.

I've long been fascinated by the concept of changelings, probably because they embody one of my favorite themes, "fish out of water." Of course, we most often think of them as babies switched soon after birth, rather than adults. Folklore speculates that fairies take human infants because their own bloodlines have run thin so that they don't bear children very often or they give birth to sickly infants. A baby not yet christened faces particular danger and should be protected by charms and cold iron. If a child appears to have been replaced by a fairy doppelganger, a variety of "cures" can be used to force the "good folk" to take back the replacement and return the "real" child. If less drastic methods don't work, one last resort is to hold the changeling over the fire—the remedy inflicted on Bridget Cleary in real life and Lizzie in THE HIDDEN PEOPLE.

Some other recommended fiction on this topic: Maurice Sendak's haunting picture book OUTSIDE OVER THERE has the same plot premise as the movie LABYRINTH: A girl, impatient with taking care of her baby brother, wishes he would disappear. The fairies or goblins steal him, and she goes on a quest to save him. In Delia Sherman's YA novel CHANGELING (and sequels), the heroine, Neef, has grown up in "New York Between," a parallel version of the city inhabited by elves, mermaids, demons, and other mythological creatures. She knows she's a human changeling and is happy with her status—until she breaks fairy law and risks becoming a sacrifice to the Wild Hunt. Kaye, the protagonist of Holly Black's much darker TITHE (and sequels), is the opposite of Neef. Although Kaye has interacted with fairies all her life, she has no idea she's one herself, a changeling left in place of a human baby.

In pre-scientific eras, the changeling belief offered a potentially comforting explanation for babies who were born weak or deformed, looked healthy at birth but turned sickly soon afterward, refused to eat and failed to thrive, or suffered from then-unidentified conditions such as autism. If such a "changeling" reverted to "normal," the magical remedies must have worked. If the baby died, parents could cling to the belief that a changeling had died and their own child was living happily with the fairies. As for young women, who might be whisked away to the faerie realm to infuse fresh blood into the elven race, a wife who suddenly became "querulous," "unnatural," or "shrewish" could be accused of having been replaced by a changeling. An ingenious pretext for husbands intent on controlling their wives' speech and behavior!

Like witchcraft persecutions, changeling beliefs could have been used as a means of social control. Diana Gabaldon combines the two superstitions in OUTLANDER, when one of the charges in Claire's trial for witchcraft (resulting from a rival's scheme to get rid of her) accuses her of involvement in the death of an alleged changeling infant left out for the fairies to reclaim.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt