A fairy, a witch and a rat: How kids around the world trade their teeth for money

Tabitha Dahlby worked hard to get her first loose tooth to finally fall out.

“I had been working on getting it out for a while,” Tabitha, now 10, said. “I pulled it out with my fingers.”

She wanted to keep the baby tooth, but knew the Tooth Fairy had other plans. She wanted to negotiate — so she headed to YouTube.

With her father manning the camera, the Linn-Mar student made her case.

“Dear Tooth Fairy, I lost my tooth but I want to keep it,” Tabitha said in the 2018 video. “Please send me money, even though I want to keep my tooth.”

Legend has it the Tooth Fairy is a nice fairy who visits children who have lost their baby teeth. Place a tooth under your pillow, and the Tooth Fairy will trade you for a coin or some value of money while you sleep.

Much like stories about Santa Claus, different cultures around the world tell different stories about the Tooth Fairy and what to do with baby teeth when they fall out. Stories about the Tooth Fairy first appeared about 100 years ago in the United States.

She’s not the only magical creature who collects kids’ baby teeth. In Spain and many Hispanic cultures, it’s El Ratoncito Pérez or Ratón Pérez — a little rat or mouse — who does this job. Children in Mexico, Guatemala and other Spanish-speaking countries grow up learning about the “tooth mouse” who takes old teeth and leaves a present instead, according to the story by Luis Coloma.

In Italy, there are stories of Marantega, a toothless witch who leaves coins under kids’ pillows in exchange for their teeth. Throughout French history, some children were told the Virgin Mary herself collected teeth from under pillows and left them toys or money, according to a paper published in Children’s Folklore Review.

In Greece, kids don’t tuck their teeth under pillows at all. According to CBC Kids, they throw them on the roof instead! Chinese and Indian kids throw their bottom teeth on the roof, too, but leave their top teeth low to the ground, sometimes burying them. If an animal takes the tooth, it’s a sign a new tooth is on its way.

In the United States, most kids work with the Tooth Fairy when they lose a tooth, like Tabitha did. Soon after she made her video for the Tooth Fairy, she woke up to find money under her pillow — and her tooth untouched.

After that, Tabitha started playing by the Tooth Fairy’s rules.

“I gave all my other teeth to the Tooth Fairy,” she said.

Comments: molly.duffy@thegazette.com