_A Remarkable Changeling Story._--'Forty to fifty years ago, between St.
John's and Foxdale, a boy, with whom I often played, came to our house
at nightfall to borrow some candles, and while he was on his way home
across the hills he suddenly saw a little boy and a little woman coming
after him. If he ran, they ran, and all the time they gained on him.
Upon reaching home he was speechless, his hands were altered (turned
awry), and his feet also, and his fingernails had grown long in a
minute. He remained that way a week. My father went to the boy's mother
and told her it wasn't Robby at all that she saw; and when my father was
for taking the tongs and burning the boy with a piece of glowing turf
[as a changeling test], the boy screamed awfully. Then my father
persuaded the mother to send a messenger to a doctor in the north near
Ramsey "doing charms", to see if she couldn't get Robby back. As the
messenger was returning, the mother stepped out of the house to relieve
him, and when she went into the house again her own Robby was there. As
soon as Robby came to himself all right, he said a little woman and a
little boy had followed him, and that just as he got home he was
conscious of being taken away by them, but he didn't know where they
came from nor where they took him. He was unable to tell more than this.
Robby is alive yet, so far as I know; he is Robert Christian, of
Douglas.'
EVIDENCE FROM A MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF KEYS
Mr. T. C. Kermode, of Peel, member of the House of Keys, the Lower House
of the Manx Parliament, very kindly dictated for my use the following
statement concerning fairies which he himself has seen:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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