Three Gifts

A Scottish tale of the dangers of the fairy folk

Video not yet publicly available

This tale has been recorded and will be uploaded to the video gallery in late 2026 or early 2027, where it will be available to watch for free - together with many, many other tales.

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I feel very uncomfortable with many of the British tales of changelings. I understand that blaming the fairies seemed a natural explanation for some children being sickly or somehow different. But the stories often recommend horrific physical treatment as a legitimate method to force the fairies to return the original child. It is difficult not to sense an excuse for child abuse.

When I first heard this tale from a Scottish friend, Allison Galbraith, I was greatly relieved as the plot took a quite different turn. Her lively telling is here.
The story made such an impression on me that it would not let me go until I had worked on my own version to tell.
(Thanks for the tale, Allison, and permission to tell it.)

Allison tells me she received the story from Bob Pegg, who has a version in Highland Folk Tales.

By that strange serendipity of storytelling, while thinking about how I wished to tell the tale, the London Review of Books had this wide-ranging article about fairies and fairylore: Cradle Scissors. Here is an excerpt:
"One of the best-known aspects of fairy lore is the myth of the changeling, in which a human child is taken by fairies and exchanged for one of inferior quality: usually a sickly child, an old fairy or a roughly hewn figurine. [...] testing children to determine whether they were changelings or not was a grave matter. In rural communities, into the 20th century, children who failed the tests were burned to death or thrown on dung heaps to die of exposure. The changeling myth justified and absolved from guilt parents who murdered frail, unaffordable or otherwise unwanted children."

More deep tales

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Permission to tell outlines my views on copyright

For those who are teachers: Telling stories in the classroom: basing language teaching on storytelling