If a neighbor or stranger should enter a cottage during the churning, he should put his hand to the dash, or the butter will not come.  A small piece of iron should be sewed into an infant’s clothes and kept there until the child is baptized, and salt should be sprinkled over his cradle to preserve the babe from abduction.  The fairies are supposed to have been conquered by an iron-weaponed race, and hence their dread of the metal.

To recover a spell-bound friend, stand on All Hallows’ eve at cross roads or at a spot pointed out by a wise woman or fairy doctor.  When you have rubbed fairy ointment on your eyelids, the fairies will become visible as the host sweeps by with its captive, whom the gazer will then be able to recognize.  A sudden gust announces their approach.  Stooping down, you will then throw dust or milk at the procession, whose members are then obliged to surrender your spell-bound friend.  If a man leaves home after his wife’s confinement, some of his clothes should be spread over the mother and infant, or the fairies may carry them off.  It is good for a woman, but bad for a man, to dream of fairies.  It betokens marriage for a girl, misfortune for a man, who should not undertake serious business for some time after such dreaming.

Fairy changelings may be recognized by tricky habits, constant crying, and other unusual characteristics.  It was customary to recover the true child in the following way:  The changeling was placed upon an iron shovel over the fire, when it would go shrieking up the chimney, and the bona fide human child would be restored.  It was believed that fairy changelings often produced a set of small bagpipes from under the clothes and played dance music upon them, till the inmates of the cottage dropped with exhaustion from the effects of the step dancing they were compelled to engage in.

On Samain eve, the night before the first of November, or, as it is now called, All Hallows’ night or Hallowe’en, all the fairy hills or shees are thrown wide open and the fairy host issues forth, as mortals who are bold enough to venture near may see.  Naturally therefore people keep indoors so as not to encounter the spectral host.  The superstition that the fairies are abroad on Samain night still exists in Ireland and Scotland, and there is a further belief, no doubt derived from it, that the graves are open on that night and that the spirits of the dead are abroad.

Salt, as already suggested, is regarded to be so lucky that if a child falls, it should always be given three pinches of salt, and if a neighbor calls to borrow salt, it should not be refused, even though it be the last grain in the house.

An infant born with teeth should have them drawn by the nearest smith, and the first teeth when shed should be thrown into the fire, lest the fairies should get hold of what had been part of you.

Those who hear fairy music are supposed to be haunted by the melody, and many are believed to go mad or commit suicide in consequence.