The most serious of all the fairy thefts was the theft of human beings: human babies taken to reinforce the fairy stock and changelings left in their place, children enticed away, young maidens to be brides, newly delivered mothers to act as nurses to fairy babies and others. Once these humans had been made captives in fairyland it was very difficult, though not impossible, to rescue them, but there are quite a number of anecdotes of the prevention of theft or of rescues before the captive had reached fairyland. 'The Laird of Balmachie's Wife', from Gibbings's Folk-Lore and Legends, Scotland' is a representative example. It is reproduced in A Dictionary of British Folk-Tales in the English Language (Part B, Vol.I):

In the olden times, when it was the fashion for gentlemen to wear swords, the Laird of Balmachie went one day to Dundee, leaving his wife at home ill in bed. Riding home in the twilight, he had occasion to leave the high road, and when crossing between some little romantic knolls, called the Cur-hills, in the neighbourhood of Carlungy, he encountered a troop of fairies supporting a kind of litter, upon which some person seemed to be borne. Being a man of dauntless courage, and, as he said, impelled by some internal impulse, he pushed his horse close to the litter, drew his sword, laid it across the vehicle, and in a firm tone exclaimed:

'In the name of God, release your captive.'

The tiny troop immediately disappeared, dropping the litter on the ground. The Laird dismounted, and found that it contained his own wife, dressed in her bedclothes. Wrapping his coat around her, he placed her on the horse before him, and, having only a short distance to ride, arrived safely at home.

Placing her in another room, under the care of an attentive friend, he immediately went to the chamber where he had left his wife in the morning, and there to all appearance she still lay, very sick of a fever. She was fretful, discontented, and complained much of having been neglected in his absence, at all of which the laird affected great concern, and, pretending much sympathy, insisted upon her rising to have her bed made. She said that she was unable to rise, but her husband was peremptory and having ordered a large wood fire to warm the room, he lifted the impostor from the bed, and bearing her across the floor as if to a chair, which had been previously prepared, he threw her on the fire, from which she bounced like a sky-rocket, and went through the ceiling, and out at the roof of the house, leaving a hole among the slates.

He then brought in his own wife, a little recovered from her alarm, who said that some time after sunset, the nurse having left her for the purpose of preparing a little caudle, a multitude of elves came in at the window, thronging like bees from a hive. They filled the room, and having lifted her from the bed, carried her through the window, after which she recollected nothing further, till she saw her husband standing over her on the Cur-hills, at the back of Carlungy.

The hole in the roof, by which the female fairy made her escape, was mended, but could never be kept in repair, as a tempest of wind happened always once a year, which uncovered that particular spot, without injuring any other part of the roof.

[Motif: F322]