Cross The Child's Palm with Silver

Cross the Child’s Palm with Silver, a blessing of good fortune for the newborn child. A piece of metal is stitched into the child’s baptismal garment as means for the child to protect itself from being taken by the fairies and changeling left for the mother.

In Irish folk tradition, there is a deep anxiety around pregnancy and childbirth, which was rooted in the many unknowns and risks associated with pregnancy in Ireland before modern medicine. The myth and folklore that surrounds women and their offspring tends to be connected to the need to protect them from harm and essentially try and secure that they grow up to be healthy and “normal”. Many stories perpetuate the creation of “the Other”, an otherworldly explanation for a child that was different.

In Ireland, the Changeling myth is ever present in the early weeks, months, and even years of a child’s life. The fear that a mother might take her eyes off her new child for even a moment and in that time the child would be swapped for a changeling, a fairy child that looked and sounded like the real child. But soon they would notice differences, changelings tended to be sickly children, distressed and upset, often malformed and disfigured. The parents would have to try and “trick” the changeling to reveal its true nature, and if they suspected that the child was a changeling, they would often try and kill it to try and have their real child returned. Changelings were usually killed by burning or drowning. Changelings were usually male children, but adults could also be taken.

Cross the Child’s Palm with Silver examines the folk tradition in Ireland from fertility and conception to pregnancy, childbirth and the protection of young children from harm from spirits or otherworldly interference. The folklore is deeply rooted in sympathetic magic, stories told and customs followed to protect from real risks. Fire was seen as cleansing, the flames would rid the land or being of evil. Ritualised burning, as well as fires lit as protection, were common. To banish a spirit from your home you would declare that its homeland, a fairy fort, was in flames- “the fairy forts are burning, the fairy forts are burning”.

The project is an exploration of Irish Folklore and the artist’s fascination with the “root” of the magic, by trying to understand why we tell these stories as a way to try and dispel her own fear of what surrounds the stories.