Behind the Folklore - The Kids Are Alright

by crystalrach

For Folklore Main Page Click Here

CHANGELINGS
In West European folklore and folk belief, a changeling is the offspring of a fairy, troll, elf or other legendary creature that has been secretly left in the place of a human child. The apparent changeling could also be a stock, a glamorized piece of wood that would soon appear to grow sick and die. The motivation for this conduct stems from the desire to have a human servant, the love of a human child, or malice. Most often it was thought that faeries exchanged the children. Simple charms, such as an inverted coat, were thought to ward them off.

Changelings would be identified by voracious appetite, malicious temper, difficulty in movement, and other unpleasant traits.[2] Medieval chronicles record instances of this, which is one of the oldest known pieces of folklore about fairies.
According to some legends, it is possible to detect changelings, as they are much wiser than human children. When changelings are detected in time, their parents have to take them back. In one tale of the Brothers Grimm, there's an account of how a woman, who suspected that her child had been exchanged, started to brew beer in the hull of an acorn. The changeling uttered: "now I am as old as an oak in the woods but I have never seen beer being brewed in an acorn", then disappeared.

Some people believed that trolls would take unbaptized children.
Beauty in human children and young women, particularly blond hair, attracted the fairies.
In Scottish folklore, the children might be replacements for fairy children in the tithe to Hell; this is best known from the ballad of Tam Lin.
Some folklorists believe that fairies were memories of inhabitants of various regions in Europe who had been driven into hiding by invaders. They held that changelings had actually occurred; the hiding people would exchange their own sickly children for the healthy children of the invaders.




OTHER REFERENCES
Dean: Gumby girl. Does that make me Pokey?
Gumby was a stop-motion/claymation kids' show. Being made of plasticine, Gumby was exceedingly flexible. His best friend was a red plasticine horse named "Pokey".

Ruby: Doesn't change the fact that you're special, in that Anthony Michael Hall ESP vision kind of way.
Referring to the USA Network TV show, The Dead Zone, starring Anthony Michael Hall as a man who can see the future by touching someone.

The episode title is referencing the Peter Townsend song that was featured on The Who's album My Generation (1965). It was later used as the basis for a rockumentary film about the band in 1979.


Information from TV.com and Wikipedia.