The Exeter Companion to Changeling Lore

For centuries, people across Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East believed that supernatural beings—fairies, jinn, trolls, or demons—could steal a human child and leave a lookalike in its place. These stories offer fascinating insights into how different cultures made sense of disability, illness, and unexplained transformations.

The Exeter Companion to Changeling Lore is the first multi-author volume dedicated to changelings and the most comprehensive study of these beliefs across West Eurasia and the Mediterranean. Bringing together leading historians, literary scholars, and folklorists, it considers changeling legends from Britain to Armenia and from the Arctic Circle to the Maghreb. Individual chapters uncover new archival material in Hungary, previously undocumented folklore motifs in Ireland, and changeling traditions in countries where they had gone unnoticed—such as Italy and Spain. The book even examines how changeling beliefs have persisted into modern UFO-lore.

Challenging long-held assumptions, this volume overturns the idea that changeling beliefs are to be found in all corners of the globe and that no such tales predate the medieval period. Instead, it reveals that the vast majority of changeling accounts belong to a distinct West Eurasian-Mediterranean tradition, with records stretching back to ancient Greece and Rome. This book is essential reading for folklorists, historians, anthropologists, disability studies and criminal studies scholars, and anyone fascinated by myths, legends, and the supernatural. It concludes with a revised list of changeling motifs, providing an invaluable resource for future research.