Pabbay Kidnapping (Hebrides)

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boiling water

In Pabbay, an island in Loch Roag, a child of a few days old was kidnapped by the Fairies in consequence of the carelessness of the woman to whom it was intrusted. The parents did not suspect that it was not their own child they were rearing, as the Fairies had left one in its stead, till an old woman from Valtos, the village opposite the island, came across to visit her daughter, and happening to be in the house, made some remarks on the child’s appear-ance. After examining the parents and handling the baby, the woman assured them that they fostered a Fairy instead of their own child. In order to get their own child restored to them, she recommended the father to put a pot of water on the fire, and then conceal himself till the water boiled in a place where he could see the child and hear it should it speak. The man did so, and no sooner did the water begin to boil than the child of but a few months old began to speak. ‘Fhearchair, thoir dheth an coire. Tha’n coire goil.’ (‘Farquhar, take off the kettle. The kettle is boiling.’) This was uttered in the hollow and tremulous tones of an old woman. The man was terrified at such an extraordinary occurrence and went directly to his adviser, who was in her daughter’s house, and related the circumstance, and sought her further advice. She told him to leave the Fairy child at midnight on the side of a hillock in the neighbourhood,an d not to trouble himself about it till morning at dawn, when he should go to the same place and bring back his own child, which, she said, the Fairies would bring there shortly after the other had been left. The man went to the hillock in the morning and carried home the child found there. The child throve and grew up to womanhood, and died at a good old age. My informant knew the woman, a nephew of whom was recently living in the parish of Uig. Anon ‘Fairy Tales’, The Celtic Review 5 (1908), 155-171 at 159-160.

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