Changelings

I had a dream I was talking to someone on dreamwidth who insisted that changelings, in the original folklore, had nothing to do with autism or any other developmental disabilties.

So, I figured now would be a good time to link two articles on the "changeling" narrative in folklore.

"Changelings: An Essay" by D. L. Ashliman

We all want explanations for happenings that fall outside of our control, especially those that have a direct bearing on our welfare. It is only natural that our forebears wanted to know why some children fail to develop normally, and what our responsibilities are toward these handicapped individuals. The two stories quoted above are part of a vast network of legends and superstitions that give primitive but satisfying answers to these questions. These accounts -- which, unlike most fantasy tales, were actually widely believed -- suggest that a physically or mentally abnormal child is very likely not the human parents' offspring at all, but rather a changeling -- a creature begotten by some supernatural being and then secretly exchanged for the rightful child. {footnote 3} From pre-Christian until recent times, many people have sincerely and actively believed that supernatural beings can and do exchange their own inferior offspring for human children, making such trades either in order to breed new strength and vitality into their own diminutive races or simply to plague humankind.

Warning for use of the R-slur in an accademic context, as this article was written in 1997.

"A Long History of Ableism – The Changeling Narrative" by Jürgen Hubert

A few weeks ago, the American Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy claimed that use of the pain medication Tylenol in pregnant women is linked to autistic children – an absurd claim without any scientific evidence to its name. But this fits into a larger pattern of hysteria about and against people with autism, including blaming the mothers for something allegedly being “wrong” with their autistic children.

While the specifics of this particular hysteria are new, the general pattern is not – as I shall show, it fits into the “changeling” narratives where “apparently healthy” infants were switched by spirits with entities that appeared to be “misbehaving” or disabled in some manner.

Content warning: Ableism, child abuse, and infanticide.

As both of these articles focus on German variations of the legend specifically, I sense a direct connection between the focus on the changeling as a burden - a repeated insistence that changelings demand too much nourishment - and the Nazis categorizing disabled people as Unnütze Esser, or "useless eaters," whose euthanization would be a net benefit to society. This term later extended to ethnic groups fascist Germany already demonized and despised, most notably Jewish people, and was used to justify the concentration camps. But the specific notion of "life unworthy of life" intially appeared in a 1920 book arguing for the euthanization of brain-damaged, intellectually disabled, and psychiatrically ill people. Hans Asperger may have saved a select portion of autistic children deemed intelligent and useful enough to live, but remember he gave permission to the Nazis for many other disabled children - including other autistic children - to be euthanized for being "useless eaters."

But this attitude is not unique to German culture, a sign of a unique predilection to bigotry. After all, the changeling narrative appears in other parts of Europe, too. And Jurgen draws direct connection between changeling narraives and modern US Amerian rhetoric surrounding autism. Even now, on the anglo internet, I see people who call themselves leftists show disdain and disgust for disabled people who wouldn't be able to "contribute" in their communist or anarchist utopias.