"Misery for Mariners"

[anteros_lmc]

Thanks to everyone who commented on my silly witches and egg shells post. Fascinating to hear that so many people have heard of this superstition. I've done a little googling research and here's what I've unearthed...



Misery for Mariners by Lullafly
The tradition seems to be a pretty widespread in the UK, it doesn't originate in any one area, and appears to be common to many costal communities, which kinda makes sense. I particularly like this version from the 1892 book The Peasant Speech of Devon.

As soon as a Devonian has eaten a boiled egg, he thrusts a spoon through the end of the shell, opposite the one at which it was begun to be eaten. When I inquired why this was done, the reply given was: "Tii keep they baggering witches vrom agwaine to zay in a egg-boat." It is supposed that the witches appropriate the unbroken shells to sail out to sea to brew storms.

There's plenty of references to the tradition online, though as with most traditions, there's very little concrete evidence as to it's origins, though I did come across a suggestion that it can be traced back to the 1500s and Opie and Tatum's Oxford Dictionary of Superstition quotes Pliny from 77AD:

there is no one...who does not dread being spell-bound by means of evil imprecations; and hence the practice, after eating eggs or snails, of immediately breaking shells or piercing them with a spoon.

Sir Thomas Browne also quotes Pliny in his 1658 Pseudodoxia Epidemica: Or, Enquiries Into Very Many Received Tenents, and Commonly Presumed Truths and adds:

To break an egg after the meate is out we are taught in our childhood and practice it all our lives, which nevertheless is but a superstitious relict....and the intent thereof was to prevent witchcraft; lest witches should draw or prick their names therein and veneficiously mischiefe ye persons, they broke ye shell as Dalecampius has observed. This custome of breaking the bottom of the egg shell is yet commonly used in the countrey.

I also came across the following verse written by Margaret Flemming in 1934:

~ Egg-shells ~

Oh, never leave your egg-shells unbroken in the cup;
Think of us poor sailor-men and always smash them up,
For witches come and find them and sail away to sea,
And make a lot of misery for mariners like me.

They take them to the sea-shore and set them on the tide -
A broom-stick for a paddle is all they have to guide
And off they go to China or round the ports of Spain,
To try and keep our sailing ships from coming home again.

They call up all the tempests from Davy Jones's store,
And blow us into waters where we haven't been before;
And when the masts are falling in splinters on the wrecks,
The witches climb the rigging and dance upon the decks.
So never leave your egg-shells unbroken in the cup;

Think of us poor sailor-men and always smash them up;
For witches come and find them and sail away to sea,
And make a lot of misery for mariners like me.

Intriguingly, Flemming's verse appears in an edition of the august journal of the Society for Nautical Research, The Mariners Mirror. It's not available online but there's a copy at Glasgow University library so I might have a chance to check it out sometime.

A rather nice East European variation on the story also appears in Charles Godfrey Leland's 1891 Gypsy Sorcery and Fortune-telling:

"Once there was a gypsy girl who noticed that when anybody ate eggs they broke up the shells, and asking why this was done received for answer:--

"'You must break the shell to bits for fear
Lest the witches should make it a boat, my dear.
For over the sea away from home,
Far by night the witches roam.'

"Then the girl said: 'I don't see why the poor witches should not have boats as well as other people.' And saying this she threw the shell of an egg which she had been eating as far as she could, and cried, 'Chovihani, lav tro bero!' ('Witch--there is your boat!') But what was her amazement to see the shell caught up by the wind and whirled away on high till it became invisible, while a voice cried, 'Paraka!' ('I thank you!')

"Now it came to pass some time after that the gypsy girl was on an island, where she remained some days. And when she wished to return, behold a great flood was rising, and it had washed her boat away, she could see nothing of it. But the water kept getting higher and higher, and soon there was only a little bit of the island above the flood, and the girl thought she must drown. just then she saw a white boat coming; there sat in it a woman with witch eyes; she was rowing with a broom, and a black cat sat on her shoulder. 'Jump in!' she cried to the girl, and then rowed her to the firm land.

"When she was or. the shore the woman said: 'Turn round three times to the right and look every time at the boat.' She did so, and every time she looked she saw the boat grow smaller till it was like an egg. Then the woman sang:--

"'That is the shell you threw to me,
Even a witch can grateful be.'

"Saying this she vanished, cat, broom, shell, and all.

"Now my story is fairly done,
I beg you to tell a better one."

So there you have it, more than you ever wanted to know about witches and egg-shell boats!

Comments

[eglantine-br.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of the witches in Macbeth, but that was a sieve. (I looked it up.)

It seems that is a tradition that may not have crossed the ocean very much. I had never heard of it, at least.

I am picturing Navy boys carefully bashing up their egg-shells.

[anteros-lmc.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised that this tradition doesn't seem to have crossed the Atlantic given the number of sailors that did! Of course I didn't look very hard, but I didn't come across any references to this tradition from US sources during my quick google.

I am picturing Navy boys carefully bashing up their egg-shells.
Heh, yes, I should imagine that Bush never left an egg shell unbashed. Horatio on the other hand stubbornly leaves his shells intact. Archie probably laughs at both of them, (and quietly crushes the shells while no one is looking ;)

[eglantine-br.livejournal.com]

I was picturing EP doing it absentmindedly, as he ate and read something. He had perhaps always done it, since childhood! (Cornwall, and all that, after all.)

[anteros-lmc.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. I am quite sure Ned would have bashed his egg shells in all his life!

[anteros-lmc.livejournal.com]

The picture it gorgeous isn't it? I don't know anything about the artist, I just stumbled across this by chance. The picture links back to her own gallery, it's worth having a look at some of her other art work too.

I might have to leave a few shells uncrushed this week. Just in case of flooding *g*
Very wise!