The Changeling
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SEACOAST POEMS
Devils, witches, babies & moms

What's better than one devil baby? Two devil babies, of course. Two New England poets were haunted by this tale of an infant possessed by Satan. Or was it the work of Hampton witch Goody Cole? Or maybe the mother herself was insane. Or perhpas -- it was just a normal screaming baby and a very exhausted mom. You be the judjge.

 

TWO VERSIONS OF "THE CHANGELEING"
Supernatural New England poems

READ: Whittier's version
READ: Lowell's version

Mother and ChildAs he did with his poem "Wreck of the Rivermouth," John Greenleaf Whittier again draws on the character Goody Cole, New Hampshire's only convicted "witch" to spice up a poem. "The Changeling" is also set in Hampton, a town very familiar to Whittier whose poems "Hampton Beach" and "Tenting on the Beach" were set there as well. Whittier imagined himself related to Rev. Batchelder, an early religious leader of Hampton. That, his ongoing fascination with witchcraft, and a friendship with "islad poet" Celia Thaxter all contributed to his choice of topic.

The legend of the changeling was popular in colonial New England where superstition was an early way to understand confusing occurrences. How, for example, could a gentle baby suddenly become a squalling little monster? The answer -- it was really an imp, the offspring of a devil or supernatural being. Stories of "exchanged children" persist from the earliest human legends in most cultures up into belief in fairy stories as recently as the 20th century.

In some religious interpretations the changeling is a piece of flesh with no heart or soul. In Whittier's poem, the distraught mother plans to throw the devilish infant into the fireplace. German theologian Martin Luther believed infanticide was a totally appropriate means of disposing of an exchanged child. Grimm's Fairy Tales suggest plenty of harsh treatment for changelings when they appear on Earth. Folklorist DL Ashliman suggests a connection between severe cases of early child abuse and child murder and the superstitious belief in the changeling tradition. The legends provided an acceptable excuse, in some societies, for mistreatment or murder of uncontrollable or handicapped children in a harsher age.

Since male babies, who could grow to provide physical labor were more "valuable," male infants in some cultures were dressed in female clothing to trick the supernatural forces. Mothers were warned to watch their babies carefully for at least six weeks to avoid an exchange, and talismans from crucifixes to bibles were left on the sleeping baby to ward off theft.

Changeling Poets

Whittier's poem adds extra twists. His presentation of the mother seems also to imply that her own psychological state may be the issue. A prayer from her husband appears to break the spell, be it depression or witchery. When the mother snaps out of her mood, she regrets, it appears, having blamed Goody Cole for bewitching her child. The husband then rides to Ipswich jail to repeal the sentence on the elderly Hampton woman. Does Whittier intend us to think that Goody replaced the baby with a devilish imp child? Or is he wondering about the power of the human psyche? His approach to Goody's curse in "Wreck of the Rivermouth" seems equally ambiguous.

Whittier's friend James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) focuses his version of "The Changeling" on angels rather then witches. Unlike the more dramatic Whittier poem that has a double happy ending, Lowell's lost child appears gone forever, stolen by angels and replaced by a soulless imp. 

Lowell was another of the literary elite from Cambridge, Mass who came to visit Celia Thaxter at her summer salon on Appledore Island. A man of letters and Harvard professor, Lowell was known as a romantic poet, a humorist, critic, and editor of Atlantic Monthly and author of 50 abolitionist articles. Lowell retained a fascination in the occult and wrote an extensive essay on witchcraft in his 1871 collected essays "Among My Books." --

READ: Whittier in NH

Copyright (c) 1998 J. Dennis Robinson. Updated 2005. Illustration of mother and child from "The Poems of John Greenleaf Whittier"Revised Edition, 1879, Riverside Press.

OUTSIDE LINK:
For more on Changelings read this essay by Professor D.L. Ashliman (click BACK to return to SeacoatNH.com)

CONTINUE To Read Both Versions



The Changeling
by John Greenleaf Whittier

FOR the fairest maid in Hampton
They needed not to search,
Who saw young Anna favor
Come walking into church,--

Or bringing from the meadows,
At set of harvest-day,
The frolic of the blackbirds,
The sweetness of the hay.

Now the weariest of all mothers,
The saddest two years' bride,
She scowls in the face of her husband,
And spurns her child aside.

"Rake out the red coals, goodman,--
For there the child shall lie,
Till the black witch comes to fetch her
And both up chimney fly.

"It's never my own little daughter,
It's never my own," she said;
"The witches have stolen my Anna,
And left me an imp instead.

"Oh, fair and sweet was my baby,
Blue eyes, and hair of gold;
But this is ugly and wrinkled,
Cross, and cunning, and old.

"I hate the touch of her fingers,
I hate the feel of her skin;
It's not the milk from my bosom,
But my blood, that she sucks in.

"My face grows sharp with the torment;
Look! my arms are skin and bone!
Rake open the red coals, goodman,
And the witch shall have her own.

"She'll come when she hears it crying,
In the shape of an owl or bat,
And she'll bring us our darling Anna
In place of her screeching brat."

Then the goodman, Ezra Dalton,
Laid his hand upon her head:
Thy sorrow is great, O woman!
I sorrow with thee," he said.

"The paths to trouble are many
And never but one sure way
Leads out to the light beyond it:
My poor wife, let us pray."

Then he said to the great All-Father,
"Thy daughter is weak and blind;
Let her sight come back, and clothe her
Once more in her right mind.

"Lead her out of this evil shadow,
Out of these fancies wild;
Let the holy love of the mother
Turn again to her child.

"Make her lips like the lips of Mary
Kissing her blessed Son;
Let her hands, like the hands of Jesus,
Rest on her little one.

"Comfort the soul of thy handmaid,
Open her prison-door,
And thine shall be all the glory
And praise forevermore."

Then into the face of its mother
The baby looked up and smiled;
And the cloud of her soul was lifted,
And she knew her little child.

A beam of the slant west sunshine
Made the wan face almost fair,
Lit the blue eyes' patient wonder
And the rings of pale gold hair.

She kissed it on lip and forehead,
She kissed it on cheek and chink
And she bared her snow-white bosom
To the lips so pale and thin.

Oh, fair on her bridal morning
Was the maid who blushed and smiled,
But fairer to Ezra Dalton
Looked the mother of his child.

With more than a lover's fondness
He stooped to her worn young face,
And the nursing child and the mother
He folded in one embrace.

"Blessed be God!" he murmured.
"Blessed be God!" she said;
"For I see, who once was blinded,--
I live, who once was dead.

"Now mount and ride, my goodman,
As thou lovest thy own soul!
Woe's me, if my wicked fancies
Be the death of Goody Cole!"

His horse he saddled and bridled,
|And into the night rode he,
Now through the great black woodland,
Now by the white-beached sea.

He rode through the silent clearings,
He came to the ferry wide,
And thrice he called to the boatman
Asleep on the other side.

He set his horse to the river,
He swam to Newbury town,
And he called up Justice Sewall
In his nightcap and his gown.

And the grave and worshipful justice
(Upon whose soul be peace!)
Set his name to the jailer's warrant
For Goodwife Cole's release.

Then through the night the hoof-beats
Went sounding like a flail;
And Goody Cole at cockcrow
Came forth from Ipswich jail.

Source: Poems of John Greenleaf Whittier, Riverside Edition, 1879.
Whittier's poem was published in Atlantic in July 1865 to popular response, including praise from his fellow Boston poet Oliver Wendell Holmes.
 

CONTINUE to read Lowell's Version



The Changeling
By James Russell Lowell

I had a little daughter,
And she was given to me
To lead me gently backward
To the Heavenly Father's knee,
That I, by the force of nature,
Might in some dim wise divine
The depth of his infinite patience
To this wayward soul of mine.

I know not how others saw her,
But to me she was wholly fair,
And the light of the heaven she came from
Still lingered and gleamed in her hair;
For it was as wavy and golden,
And as many changes took,
As the shadows of the sun-gilt ripples
On the yellow bed of a brook.

To what can I liken her smiling
Upon me, her kneeling lover,
How it leaped from her lips to her eyelids,
And dimpled her wholly over,
Till her outstretched hands smiled also,
And I almost seemed to see
The very heart of her mother
Sending sun through her veins to me!

She had been with us scarce a twelvemonth,
And it hardly seemed a day,
When a troop of wandering angels
Stole my little daughter away;
Or perhaps those heavenly Zingari
But loosed the hampering strings,
And when they had opened her cage-door,
My little bird used her wings.

But they left in her stead a changeling,
A little angel child,
That seems like her bud in full blossom,
And smiles as she never smiled:
When I wake in the morning, I see it
Where she always used to lie,
And I feel as weak as a violet
Alone 'neath the awful sky.

As weak, yet as trustful also;
For the whole year long I see
All the wonders of faithful Nature
Still worked for the love of me;
Winds wander, and dews drip earthward,
Rain falls, suns rise and set,
Earth whirls, and all but to prosper
A poor little violet.

The child is not mine as the first was,
I cannot sing it to rest,
I cannot lift it up fatherly
And bliss it upon my breast;
Yet it lies in my little one's cradle
And sits in my little one's chair,
And the light of the heaven she's gone to
Transfigures its golden hair.

Poem and Illustration Source: The Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell, Riverside, 1879.