nce."[87] The problem set before the heroes of many folk-tales
is to compel laughter, but that does not seem to be intended in these
changeling stories. At least I have only met with it in one, and it
certainly is not common. The confession of age which the ceremony draws
forth is really much more. It is a confession that the apparently human
babe is an imposture, that it belongs in fact to a different race, and
has no claim on the mother's care and tenderness. Therefore it is not
always enough for the fraud to be discovered: active means must
sometimes be taken to rid the family of their supernatural burden and
regain their own little one. In Grimm's story, in which the child
laughs, a host of elves comes suddenly bringing back the true and
carrying away the false one; and in many of the German and Northern
tales the changeling disappears in one way or other immediately after
its exclamation. We are sometimes even told in so many words that the
changeling had betrayed himself, and the underground folk were obliged
to give back the stolen child. And in the Lithuanian story we have cited
the _laumes_ straightway falls sick and dies.[88] Such conduct accords
entirely with the resentment at being recognized which we have in a
previous chapter found to be a characteristic of spiritual existences.
It is much more like the dislike of being found out attributed to beings
who are in the habit of walking invisible, than any mystical effect of
laughter.

If this be so, still less do the stories where it is required actually
to drive the imp away support the learned German's contention. The means
taken in these stories are very various. Sometimes it is enough to let
the child severely alone, as once in the Isle of Man where a woman laid
her child down in the field while she was cutting corn, and a fairy
changed it there and then. The changeling began to scream, but the
mother was prevented by a man who had been a witness to the transaction
from picking it up; and when the fairy found that no notice was taken
the true child was brought back. In the island of Lewis the custom was
to dig a grave in the fields on Quarter Day and lay the goblin in it
until the next morning, by which time it was believed the human babe
would be returned. In the north of Germany one is advised not to touch
the changeling with the hands, but to overturn the cradle so that the
child falls on the floor. The elf must then be swept out of the door
with an old