In her enchanting work subtitled Elf Charms in Context, Karen Louise Jolly tells us that in the tenth- and eleventh-centuries in England, Anglo-Saxon Christians were said to have kept alive a folk belief in elves considering them as creatures capable of harming humans who failed to pay heed. These beliefs are from ancient cultures such as the Celts.
In order to ward off afflictions caused by these wee creatures, priests of the day, altered elf charms by combining liturgical chants with herbal remedies designed to stave off elvish onslaughts. Jolly provides several examples of the blending of charms and liturgy.
Against snake bite take wax from your ears and smear with it around and sing three times the St. John's Prayer.
Source: Karen Louise Jolly, Popular Religion in Late Saxon England: Elf Charms in Context , University of North Carolina Press, 1996.
In Fairy Mythology, Thomas Keightley sheds light on two contraband whiskey dealers near Glenlivat, who were laying in stock one night when they heard a child give an anguished cry and the mother bless her child. The moonshiners left without further ado.
They had not gone far, when they found a healthy babe unattended at the side of the road. They quickly recognized the child as being the very child that had somewhat earlier given the anguished cry. The moonshiners realized that the fairies had taken away the real child and left a stock, in its place. The mother's blessing had disturbed their plans.
Due to the pressure of business, the moon shiners were forced to take the child with them. A short while later they were able to revisit Glenlivat. On their arrival they failed to mention that they had the lost child with them. In the course of the evening, the mother happened to remark that the disease, which had attacked the child the last time they visited, had never left it. She said that she had little hope for its recovery.
The lads produced the real child healthy and hearty, and told how they had found it. An exchange was at once effected, and they forthwith proceeded to dispose of their new charge. For this purpose they got an old creel to put him in and some straw to light under it. The outcome is left to the reader's imagination.
Keightley explains that the Celtic Fairy-Faith is based upon a form of belief in a spiritual realm which is occupied by spiritual beings, which have existed from prehistoric times until the present day in Ireland, Scotland, Isle of Man, Wales, Cornwall, Brittany and in other parts of the ancient empire of the Celts. Keightley is concerned with Celtic folk-traditions recorded in literature.
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