Brewer's: Changeling

(2 syl.) A peevish, sickly child. The notion used to be that the fairies took a healthy child, and left in its place one of their starveling elves which never did kindly

Oh, that it could be proved That some night-tripping fairy had exchanged In cradle-clothes our children as they lay, And called mine Percy, his Plantagenet! Then would I have his Harry, and he mine.

Shakespeare: 1 Henry IV., i. 1.

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