do you know that in 19th century Ireland there was a superstitious in which a ‘fairy’ could kidnap your loved one and swapped it with a changeling? Changeling was believed as a ‘fairy child’  that had been left in a human world to replace a stolen human. The folklore said that the sign of changeling might be a sudden change in your loved one behaviour. Do you know what’s more interesting? The ‘fairy’ might interested with human child and women only. 

it sounds ridiculous for now, but it was a serious event back then. There was a woman named Bridget Clarry, she was murdered by her own husband, Michael Cleary , who really (heavily) believed in ‘Changeling’. He thought the signs was all there, her behaviour change, and she suddenly diseased  (she was having bronchitis for God sake!), and Voila, she’s dead by the hand of her own husband.

source: wikipedia, fathersonholygore 

and why suddenly an ignorant me mumbling about this?

Well, I watched Lore – Season 1, episode 3 : Black Stocking’ (you can watch it in Amazon Prime video, btw) and it  left me speechless

from that episode, I learned that human somehow have difficulty of saying ‘I don’t know’. So, when something that we can’t understand ‘why’ happened, the reaction will probably be : “it is the Devil’s work”.

how easily us, as a human being, refer almost everything that we can’t understand as something that is called superstitious?

the Changeling is one of many extreme superstitious example that had taken casualties. There were times that human screaming/marching for another human being to be burned down to ashes, remember the witch hunt or witch purge in an early modern Europe times ?

or let’s be more local by taking an Indonesian case. ‘The slaughter of Banyuwangi 1998’ or ‘kasus pembantaian di Banyuwangi 1998’ (here, to read the full story: pembantaian Banyuwangi 1998 ), well the cause was still a mystery.

dang it, what the heaven Im tryin to say?

just…. fellow human being, the universe is a very superbly massive big thing, so it’s OK if we say that we don’t know everything, just accept it, it’s a step to comprehend something beyond our current knowledge, to say that we still need time to learn about many things, to contribute a little piece of something in this big thing, instead of blame it to something that’s even more confusing.