in many places, that if a child's
first tooth appears in the upper jaw it is an omen of its dying in
infancy; and when the teeth come early it is regarded as an indication
that there will soon be another baby. In Sussex there is a dislike to
throwing away the cast teeth of children, from a notion that, should
they be found and gnawed by any animal, the child's new tooth would be
exactly like the animal's that had bitten the old one. In Durham, when
the first teeth come out the cavities must be filled with salt, and each
tooth burned, while the following words are repeated:

"Fire, fire, burn bone,
God send me my tooth again."

In the above passage, then, Shakespeare simply makes the Duke of Gloster
refer to that extensive folk-lore associated with human birth, showing
how careful an observer he was in noticing the whims and oddities of his
countrymen.

Again, one of the foremost dangers supposed to hover round the new-born
infant was the propensity of witches and fairies to steal the most
beautiful and well-favored children, and to leave in their places such
as were ugly and stupid. These were usually called "changelings."
Shakespeare alludes to this notion in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (ii.
1), where Puck says:

"Because that she, as her attendant, hath
A lovely boy, stol'n from an Indian king;
She never had so sweet a changeling."

And further on, in the same scene, Oberon says:

"I do but beg a little changeling boy,
To be my henchman."

As a fairy is, in each case, the speaker, the changeling in this case
denotes the child taken by them. So, too, in the "Winter's Tale" (iii.
3), in the passage where the Shepherd relates: "it was told me, I should
be rich by the fairies; this is some changeling:--open't." As the child
here found was a beautiful one, the changeling must naturally mean the
child stolen by the fairies, especially as the gold left with it is
conjectured to be fairy gold. The usual signification, however, of the
term _changeling_ is thus marked by Spenser ("Fairy Queen," I. x. 65).

"From thence a faery thee unweeting reft,
There as thou slepst in tender swadling band,
And her base elfin brood there for thee left:
Such men do chaungelings call, so chaunged by faeries theft."

Occasionally fairies played pranks with new-born children by exchanging
them. To this notion King Henry refers ("1 Henry IV." i. 1) when,
speaking of Hotspur compared with his