the Nithsdale story
which I have already cited, the servant girl at midnight covers up the
chimney and every other inlet, makes the embers glowing hot, and
undressing the changeling tosses it on them. In answer to its yells the
fairies are heard moaning and rattling at the window boards, the
chimney-head, and the door. "In the name o' God, bring back the bairn,"
she exclaims. In a moment up flew the window, the human child was laid
unharmed on the mother's lap, while its guilty substitute flew up the
chimney with a loud laugh.[92]

Frightful as this cruelty would seem to every one if perpetrated on the
mother's own offspring, it was regarded with equanimity as applied to a
goblin; and it is not more frightful than what has been actually
perpetrated on young children, and that within a very few years, under
the belief that they were beings of a different race. Instances need not
be multiplied; it will be enough to show that one of the horrible
methods of disposing of changelings referred to in the last paragraph
came under judicial notice no longer ago than the month of May 1884. Two
women were reported in the "Daily Telegraph" as having been arrested at
Clonmel on the 17th of that month, charged with cruelly ill-treating a
child three years old. The evidence given was to the effect that the
neighbours fancied that the child, who had not the use of his limbs, was
a changeling. During the mother's absence the prisoners accordingly
entered her house and placed the child naked on a hot shovel, "under the
impression that this would break the charm." As might have been
expected the poor little thing was severely burnt, and, when the women
were apprehended, it was in a precarious condition. The prisoners, on
being remanded, were hooted by an indignant crowd. It might be thought
that this was an indication of the decay of superstition, even in
Ireland, however much to be condemned as an outburst of feeling against
unconvicted and even untried persons. But we must regard it rather as a
protest against the prisoners' inhumanity than against their
superstition: in either case, of course, the product of advancing
civilization. For if we may trust the witness of other sagas we find the
trial by fire commuted to a symbolic act, as though men had begun to be
revolted by the cruelty, even when committed only on a fairy who had
been found out, but were unwilling to abandon their belief in the power
of the exorcism. In the north-east of