Changeling

a child left in place of another. During the Middle Ages there was a popular superstition that the fairies were likely to take away a babe and place their own in its stead. The more vigorous a young child, the more likely the fairies were to desire it. The exchange might be made any time before the christening. Young babes were watched, therefore, closely, until that ceremony had been performed. A stunted, dwarfed, crippled, or underwitted child was believed commonly to be a changeling. Spenser speaks of changelings changed by "faeries' theft." The term is employed frequently by the British poets. Lowell, who lost a little daughter, uses the idea beautifully. He speaks of the memory of his little child as though it were a changeling left in its place by the angels.