“There was once a gypsy girl who was very clever, and whenever she heard people talk about witches she remembered it well. One day she took an egg-shell and made a small round hole in it very neatly, and ate the yolk and white, but the shell she put on a heap of white sand by a stream, where it was very likely to be seen. Then she hid herself behind a bush. By and by, when it was night, there came a witch, who, seeing the shell, pronounced a word over it, when it changed to a beautiful boat, into which the witch got and sailed on the water, over the sea.
“The girl remembered the word, and soon ate another egg and turned it into a boat. Whenever she willed it went over the world to places where fruit and flowers abounded, or where people gave her much gold for such things as knives and scissors. So she grew rich and had a fine house. The boat she hid away carefully in a bush.
“There was a very envious, wicked woman, whom the girl had befriended many a time, and who hated her all the more for it. And this creature set to work, spying and sneaking, to find out the secret of the girl’s prosperity. And at last she discovered the boat, and, suspecting something, hid herself in the bush hard by to watch.
“By and by the girl came with a basket full of wares for her trade, and, drawing out the boat, said, ‘To Africa!’—when off it flew. The woman watched and waited. After a few hours the girl returned. Her boat was full of fine things, ostrich feathers and gold, fruit and strange flowers, all of which she carried into her house.
“Then the woman put the boat on the water, and said, ‘To Africa!’ But she did not know the word by means of which it was changed from an egg-shell, and which made it fly like thought. So as it went along the woman cried, ‘Faster!’ but it never heeded her. Then she cried again in a great rage, and at last exclaimed, ‘In God’s name get on with you!’ Then the spell was broken, and the boat turned into an egg-shell, and the woman was drowned in the great rolling sea.”
Egg-lore is inexhaustible. The eggs of Maundy Thursday (Witten Donnertag), says a writer in The Queen, protect a house against thunder and lightning, but, in fact, an egg hung up is a general protection, hence the ostrich eggs and cocoanuts of the East. Some other very interesting items in the communication referred to are as follows:—
“Witches and Eggs.—‘To hang an egg laid on Ascension Day in the roof of a house,’ says Reginald Scot in 1584, ‘preserveth the same from all hurts.’ Probably this was written with an eye to the ‘hurts’ arising from witchcraft, in connection with which eggs were supposed to possess certain mysterious powers. In North Germany, if you have a desire to see the ladies of the broomstick on May Day, their festival, you must take an egg laid on Maundy Thursday, and stand where four roads meet; or else you must go into church on Good Friday, but come out before the blessing. It was formerly quite an article of domestic belief that the shells must be broken after eating eggs, lest the witches should sail out to sea in them; or, as Sir Thomas Browne declared, lest they ‘should draw or prick their names therein, and veneficiously mischief’ the person who had partaken of the egg. North Germans, ignoring this side of the question, say, ‘Break the shells or you will get the ague;’ and Netherlanders advise you to secure yourself against the attacks of this disagreeable visitor by eating on Easter Day a couple of eggs which were laid on Good Friday.
“Scottish Superstitions.—Scotch fishers, who may be reckoned among the most superstitious of folks, believe that contrary winds and much consequent vexation of spirit will be the result of having eggs on board with them; while in the west of England it is considered very unlucky to bring birds’ eggs into the house, although they may be hung up with impunity outside. Mr. Gregor, in his ‘Folklore of the North-East of Scotland,’ gives us some curious particulars concerning chickens, and the best methods of securing a satisfactory brood. The hen, it seems, should be set on an odd number of eggs, or the chances are that most, if not all, will be addled—a mournful prospect for the henwife; also they must be placed under the mother bird after sunset, or the chickens will be blind. If the woman who performs this office carries the eggs wrapped up in her chemise, the result will be hen birds; if she wears a man’s hat, cocks. Furthermore, it is as well for her to repeat a sort of charm, ‘A’ in thegeethir, A’ oot thegeethir.’
“Unlucky Eggs.—There are many farmers’ wives, even in the present day, who would never dream of allowing eggs to be brought into the house or taken out after dark—this being deemed extremely unlucky. Cuthbert Bede mentions the case of a farmer’s wife in Rutland who received a setting of ducks’ eggs from a neighbour at nine o’clock at night. ‘I cannot imagine how she could have been so foolish,’ said the good woman, much distressed, and her visitor, upon inquiry, was told that ducks’ eggs brought into a house after sunset would never be hatched. A Lincolnshire superstition declares that if eggs are carried over running water they will be useless for setting purposes; while in Aberdeen there is an idea prevalent among the country folks that should it thunder a short time before chickens are hatched, they will die in the shell. The same wiseacres may be credited with the notion that the year the farmer’s gudewife presents him with an addition to his family is a bad season for the poultry yard. ‘Bairns an’ chuckens,’ say they, ‘dinna thrive in ae year.’ The probable explanation being that the gudewife, taken up with the care of her bairn, has less time to attend to the rearing of the ‘chuckens.’
“Fortune-telling in Northumberland.—Besides the divination practised with the white of an egg, which certainly appears of a vague and unsatisfactory character, another species of fortune-telling with eggs is in vogue in Northumberland on the eve of St. Agnes. A maiden desirous of knowing what her future lord is like, is enjoined to boil an egg, after having spent the whole day fasting and in silence, then to extract the yolk, fill the cavity with salt, and eat the whole, including the shell. This highly unpalatable supper finished, the heroic maid must walk backwards, uttering this invocation to the saint:—
“ ‘Sweet St. Agnes, work thy fast,
If ever I be to marry man,
Or man be to marry me,
I hope him this night to see.’ ”
Friedrich and others assert that the saying in Luke xi. 12—“Or if he shall ask an egg shall he give him a scorpion?”—is a direct reference to ancient belief that the egg typified the good principle, and the scorpion evil, and which is certainly supported by a cloud of witnesses in the form of classic folk-lore. The egg, as a cosmogenic symbol, and indicating the origin of all things, finds a place in the mythologies of many races. These are indicated with much erudition by Friedrich, “Symbolik der Natur,” p. 686.
In Lower Alsatia it is believed that if a man will take an Easter egg into the church and look about him, if there be any witches in the congregation he may know them by their having in their hands pieces of pork instead of prayer-books, and milk-pails on their heads for bonnets (Wolf, “Deutsche Mährchen und Sagen,” p. 270). There is also an ancient belief that an egg built into a new building will protect it against evil and witchcraft. Such eggs were found in old houses in Altenhagen and Iserlohen, while in the East there is a proverb, “the egg of the chamber” (“Hamasa” of Abu Temman, v. Rückert, Stuttgart, 1846), which seems to point to the same practice.
The Romans expressed a disaster by saying, “Ovum ruptum est” (“The egg is smashed”). Among other egg-proverbs I find the following:—
His eggs are all omelettes (French); i.e., broken up.
Eggs in the pan give pancakes but nevermore chicks (Low German).
Never a chicken comes from broken eggs (Low German).
Bad eggs, bad chickens. Hence in America “a bad egg” for a man who is radically bad, and “a good egg” for the contrary.
Eggs not yet laid are uncertain chickens; i.e., “Do not count your chickens before they are hatched.”
Tread carefully among eggs (German).
The egg pretends to be cleverer than the hen.
He waits for the eggs and lets the hen go.
He who wants eggs must endure the clucking of the hen (Westphalian).
He thinks his eggs are of more account than other people’s hens.
One rotten egg spoils all the pudding.
Rotten eggs and bad butter always stand by one another; or “go well together.”
Old eggs, old lovers, and an old horse,
Are either rotten or for the worse.
(Original:
Alte Eyer
Alte Freier—
Alter Gaul
Sind meistens faul.)
“All eggs are of the same size” (Eggs are all alike), he said, and grabbed the biggest.
As like as eggs (Old Roman).
As sure as eggs.
His eggs all have two yolks.
If you have many eggs you can have many cakes.
He who has many eggs scatters many shells.
To throw an egg at a sparrow.
To borrow trouble for eggs not yet hatched.
Half an egg is worth more than all the shell.
A drink after an egg, and a leap after an apple.
A rotten egg in his face.
In the early mythology, the egg, as a bird was hatched from it, and as it resembled seeds, nuts, &c., from which new plants come, was regarded as the great type of production. This survives in love-charms, as when a girl in the Tyrol believes she can secure a man’s love by giving him a red Easter egg. This giving red eggs at Easter is possibly derived from the ancient Parsees, who did the same at their spring festival. Among the Christians the reproductive and sexual symbolism, when retained, was applied to the resurrection of the body and the immortality of the soul. Hence Easter eggs. And as Christ by His crucifixion caused this, or originated the faith, we have the ova de crucibus, the origin of which has puzzled so many antiquaries; for the cross itself was, like the egg, a symbol of life, in earlier times of reproduction, and in a later age of life eternal. These eggs are made of a large size of white glass by the Armenian Christians.
[1] “Südslavische Hexensagen, Mittheilungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien.” xiv. Bande, 1884. “Medizinische Zaubersprüche aus Slavonien, Bosnien, der Hercegovina und Dalmatien.” Wien, 1887. “Sreča, Glück und Schicksal im Volksglauben der Südslaven.” Wien, 1886. “Südslavische Pestsagen.” Wien, 1883. [↑]