Who Is Siofra?
May 11th, 2006 by lisa
My Evil Fairy
She doesn’t look evil, does she? A reader left a comment on one of my old posts about Siofra. Her name is Siofra too, but she’s not a cat, she’s a very nice human. Actually Siofra is a human name (pronounced shee-fra), and I found it on a website of baby names. Anyway…
Siofra - the human, not the cat - wrote that there is a story connected with the name Siofra of which I was unaware. But this could possibly explain why my ‘little fairy’ is such a bundle of trouble most of the time. In Irish lore Siofra is a word for changeling, who were ‘generally troublesome and created mayhem in the house’. Paul found this bit of information on this website.
According to folklore, a fairy would secretly exchange a mortal infant with that of the fairy kind. The fairy baby was called a changeling. Sometimes, the stolen babies were returned to the families, especially when a person can expose the true nature of the changeling. The changeling existed in all folklore and fairy tales.
In Scottish Gaelic tradition, the changeling was called tà charan or umaidh. In Irish folklore, it is corpán sidhe, sÃodhbradh or sÃofra; and in Manx it is Ihianoo shee. The Welsh called them plentyn a neidiwyd am arall.
Had I known about this, I would have probably picked another name. One thing I’ve learned over the years is that pets will often live up to their names. So I guess I have only myself to blame when my ‘little fairy’ is creating havoc and driving us crazy.
Siofra sometimes posts here on my blog. She does it when I’m not looking, so I haven’t been able to catch her at it yet. You can tell when it’s her though, ’cause she’s not very good at spelling. Although I think she does pretty good, for a cat.
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