to take their own again instead. In a more detailed
narrative from Islay, the father arms himself with a Bible, a dirk, and
a crowing cock, and having found the hill where the "Good People" had
their abode open, and filled with the lights and sounds of festival, he
approached and stuck the dirk into the threshold. The object of this was
to prevent the entrance from closing upon him. Then he steadily
advanced, protected from harm by the Bible at his breast. Within, his
boy (who was thirteen or fourteen years of age) was working at the
forge; but when the man demanded him the elves burst into a loud laugh,
which aroused the cock in his arms. The cock at once leaped upon his
shoulders, flapped his wings, and crowed loud and long. The enraged
elves thereupon cast the man and his son both out of the hill, and flung
the dirk after them; and in an instant all was dark. It should be added
that for a year and a day afterwards the boy did no work, and scarcely
spoke; but he ultimately became a very famous smith, the inventor of a
specially fine and well-tempered sword. The changeling himself in one of
Lady Wilde's tales directs his foster-mother to Fairyland. The way
thither was down a well; and she was led by the portress, an old woman,
into the royal palace. There the queen admits that she stole the child,
"for he was so beautiful," and put her own instead. The re-exchange is
effected, and the good woman is feasted with food which the fairies
cannot touch, because it has been sprinkled with salt. When she found
herself again at home, she fancied she had only been away an hour: it
was three years.[99]

But it was not always necessary to incur the risk of going as far as the
other world. The Glamorganshire woman, whose successful cooking of a
black hen has been already referred to, had first to go at full moon to
a place where four roads met, and hide herself to watch the fairy
procession which passed at midnight. There in the midst of the music and
the _Bendith eu mammau_ she beheld her own dear little child. One of the
most interesting changeling stories was gravely related in the "Irish
Fireside" for the 7th of January 1884, concerning a land-leaguer who
had been imprisoned as a suspect under the then latest Coercion Act.
When this patriot was a boy he had been stolen by the fairies, one of
themselves having been left in his place. The parish priest, however,
interfered; and by a miracle he caused the elf for a moment to
disa