to eat, he
would squeak out drily: _'B'yta 'nynna b'yta'r cwbwl_,' that is to
say--'Eating--that means eating all.'" A changeling in Monmouthshire,
described by an eye-witness at the beginning of the present century, was
simply an idiot of a forbidding aspect, a dark, tawny complexion, and
much addicted to screaming.[78]

But a changeling was to be known in other ways than by his physical
defects; under careful management he might be led to betray himself in
speech or action. A Kirkcudbrightshire tale represents a child as once
left in charge of a tailor, who "commenced a discourse" with him.
"'Will, hae ye your pipes?' says the tailor. 'They're below my head,'
says the tenant of the cradle. 'Play me a spring,' says the tailor. Like
thought, the little man, jumping from the cradle, played round the room
with great glee. A curious noise was heard meantime outside; and the
tailor asked what it meant. The little elf called out: 'It's my folk
wanting me,' and away he fled up the chimney, leaving the tailor more
dead than alive." In the neighbouring county of Dumfries the story is
told with more gusto. The gudewife goes to the hump-backed tailor, and
says: "Wullie, I maun awa' to Dunse about my wab, and I dinna ken what
to do wi' the bairn till I come back: ye ken it's but a whingin',
screechin', skirlin' wallidreg--but we maun bear wi' dispensations. I
wad wuss ye,' quoth she, 'to tak tent till't till I come hame--ye sall
hae a roosin' ingle, and a blast o' the goodman's tobacco-pipe forbye.'
Wullie was naething laith, and back they gaed the-gither. Wullie sits
down at the fire, and awa' wi' her yarn gaes the wife; but scarce had
she steekit the door, and wan half-way down the close, when the bairn
cocks up on its doup in the cradle, and rounds in Wullie's lug: 'Wullie
Tylor, an' ye winna tell my mither when she comes back, I'se play ye a
bonny spring on the bagpipes.' I wat Wullie's heart was like to loup the
hool--for tylors, ye ken, are aye timorsome--but he thinks to himsel':
'Fair fashions are still best,' an' 'It's better to fleetch fules than
to flyte wi' them'; so he rounds again in the bairn's lug: 'Play up, my
doo, an' I'se tell naebody.' Wi' that the fairy ripes amang the cradle
strae, and pu's oot a pair o' pipes, sic as tylor Wullie ne'er had seen
in a' his days--muntit wi' ivory, and gold, and silver, and dymonts, and
what not. I dinna ken what spring the fairy played, but this I ken weel,
that Wullie had nae