There’s an old belief that when you finish a soft-boiled egg, you should knock a hole in the bottom of the shell with your spoon to stop witches sailing in it.
I have questions, mainly relating to witch size and egg durability. And I’m not the only one. In 1646, Sir Thomas Browne can’t even with “this nonsense“ in his compendium of stupid folklore, Vulgar Errors.
“Why, we might ask, would anyone want to sail in an egg-shell, by day or night; and if anyone did, why could they not provide their own?”
Why indeed, Sir Thomas. Why indeed.
The question had actually been answered in 1584 by witchcraft debunker Reginald Scot.
In his list of things he thought witches definitely couldn’t do is “…saile in an egge shell, a cockle or muscle shell, through and under the tempestuous seas.”
This magical property of shells probably came in handy when raising storms and causing shipwrecks, which Reginald Scot also thought witches couldn’t do, along with killing lambs by looking at them, drawing down the stars or turning into ferrets. He was in a minority at the time.
We can trace knocking holes in eggs much further back though. In the first century AD, Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder says that the fear of being cursed is what makes “everybody break the shells of eggs or snails immediately after eating them, or else pierce them with the spoon that they have used.”
The egg witch superstition is alive and well in the 21st Century. My Oxford-born partner, a rational tech and data nerd, has done it since he was a kid. He made it clear that egg-scuttling was a deal-breaker early on in our relationship. So now I do it too.
Things to make and do
Visit the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Boscastle where they have a display on sea witchcraft, and a painting by artist Jos Smith called “Witches and Eggshells”.
Read about the other miraculous actions imputed to witches by witchmongers, papists, and poets, courtesy of Reginald Scot.
Search for a hag stone on the beach, good for warding off seafaring witches.
Image is a collage created by Emily Cleaver. Woodcut images courtesy British Library, shelfmarks 012331.e.126, 11603.h.21, Maps K.Top.31.40.g, RB.31.a.23.(2), photo elements by HelenHates Peas and Eryne, Flickr Creative Commons.