The fairy changeling represents one of the least attractive parts of fairy behaviour. Fairies would – case have dropped off in the last century – search out babies and infants, typically baby boys or sometimes beautiful young women. They would, then, kidnap these human victims. However, it was not enough to kidnap. They would leave behind either a simulacrum (a stock of wood or a broom that magically appeared to be a child or a woman) or they would actually leave behind a fairy who would take the kidnapped human’s place, the ‘changeling‘. Often mothers or husbands would suspect that they had a changeling on their hands when a young baby or a beautiful wife became listless or when their health changed dramatically: the onset of a serious medical condition may have encouraged parents to think that they had a changeling in their house. The typical response was then to torture the ‘changeling’ with fire or metal or boiling water until the horrified fairies felt obliged to intervene. The fairies would, then, bring the changeling back and take their own fairy away. We have several early modern and even nineteenth-century cases of ‘changelings’ being mistreated by parents in the most dreadful circumstances. The most famous is the case of Brigid Cleary who was burnt in 1895 in County Tipperary (Ireland) by her husband because he believed that Brigid was a fairy.