When a mother finds a scrawny, ill-tempered, foul-mouthed yellow-faced little man in the cradle, she knows instantly that the fairies have traded her boy for this thing. The dwarfed form and irritable manner convince some people that the creature is actually a child, but those people especially a mother know that a fairy changeling has entered her/their home.

Each fairy changeling has a distinctive personality; but ugliness and an ill temper are generic traits.

Fairies, in their immortal perfection, are repulsed by these creatures with their restless, coal-burnt eyes, puckered features and textured skin. The fairy changeling's whines, yowls, screeches and cries so aggravate humans that they are immediately removed.

A family whose son or daughter is abducted may receive as a substitute a sickly fairy child or a log of wood bewitched to look like their own child, who soon gets sick and die. They bury and mourn it, never realizing that their own child plucks flowers in fairyland. Yet despite their grief and ignorance, they are more fortunate to suffer such a loss than to have a fairy changeling pounding their floors and raiding their cupboards.