From Alpine Tales to Pirandello’s Fiction : Mapping Changeling Beliefs across Italy

For centuries, people across Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East believed that supernatural beings—fairies, jinn, trolls, or demons—could steal a human child and leave a lookalike in its place. These stories offer fascinating insights into how different cultures made sense of disability, illness, and unexplained transformations. Our article proposes a general survey on changeling beliefs in Italy, with particular reference to Sicily, where, until a few decades ago, superstition about changelings (canciati or canciateddi, in local dialect) were widespread. In 1902, as part of naturalism’s interest in popular culture, Luigi Pirandello, strongly influenced by Sicilian folklore and, perhaps, by Giuseppe Pitrè’s folklore studies, wrote a short story: ‘Le Nonne’, that in 1923 became ‘Il figlio cambiato’ (‘The Changeling’). Sara, the protagonist is a young mother convinced that his newborn has been substituted by the mysterious Ladies from Outside and eager to see him again, she makes a pact with a witch, Vanna Scoma. Can a (modern) literary text help us understand better this legend type and its Sicilian variant?