from the bed by invisible hands and carried clean away. She
shrieked at once to the nurse, but failed to arouse her; and when her
husband returned, an infant was indeed lying beside her, but a poor,
lean, withered, deformed creature, very different from her own. It lay
quite naked, though the clothes of the true child had been considerately
left for it by the ravishers.[73]

One of the difficulties experienced by the fairies on two of the three
occasions here narrated in making off with the little one occurred at
the door of the house. That they should have tried, repeatedly at all
events, to pass out that way is almost as remarkable as that they should
have been permitted more than once to attempt the theft. For the
threshold is a part of the dwelling which from of old has been held
sacred, and is generally avoided by uncanny beings. Wiser, though still
doomed to failure, were those Irish elves who lifted up a window and
handed the infant out. For it happened that a neighbour who was coming
to pay a visit that moment stopped before the house, and exclaimed: "God
keep all here from harm!" No sooner had she uttered the words than she
saw the child put forth, how, or by whom, she did not know; and without
hesitation she went up and took it away home with her. The next morning
when she called to see how her friend fared great was the moan made to
her over the behaviour of the child--so different from what it had ever
been before--crying all the night and keeping awake its mother, who
could not quiet it by any means. "I'll tell you what you'll do with the
brat," she replied; "whip it well first, and then bring it to the
cross-roads, and leave the fairy in the ditch there for any one to take
that pleases; for I have your child at home safe and sound as he was
handed out of the window last night to me." When the mother heard this,
she just stepped out to get a rod; but before she returned the
changeling had vanished, and no one either saw or heard of it again.[74]

Fairies, however, when bent upon mischief, are not always baulked so
easily. They effect the exchange, sometimes in the house, and sometimes
when the parent is at work in the fields and incautiously puts her
offspring down the while. In these circumstances, grievous as may be the
suspicion arising from the changed conduct of the nursling, it is not
always easy to be sure of what has taken place. Tests, therefore, have
to be applied. Often the appearance is enough.