Natalie Zaman
The egg has been a symbol of renewal and rebirth for thousands of years. Before Peter Carl Fabergé ever jeweled an egg, ancient Egyptians were decorating ostrich eggs as tomb treasure for the deceased to use in his next life. To nearly all cultures that embrace them as such, eggs have always been a positive emblem of life, rebirth, and promise. But eggs are also objects of mystery.
They pose questions: which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Medieval riddles puzzled their substance and form: “A white house filled with meat, but no door to go in and eat,” or “A lady in a boat in a yellow petticoat.”
Eggs could be used to predict the weather, death, and the marriage of partners. Eggs and their shells were the ingredients in magical cures as well as spells and curses; a cheating husband could be brought to heel by writing his and his lover’s names on an egg and then smashing it—accompanied by the right prayers—against the eastern corner of your house.
Eggs are not so simple. Eggs are enigmas.
Thanks to their fragile packaging, eggs were and are something to be handled with care—not necessarily walking on eggshells, although that may be the origin of that turn of phrase—but it’s possible that they’re not so delicate. It was believed that egg shells had to be thoroughly crushed once an egg was broken. Witches or wicked spirits could use them as houses—being able to shrink themselves to fit, of course—or, as the riddle above suggests, boats in which they could take to the water and control the weather. It’s important to note that these folk beliefs are about normal eggs.
Today encountering an abnormal egg usually means scoring a double-yolker in your dozen from the grocery store. Keep chickens (as was the case in many households in the past) and you’ll inevitably encounter very different and even disturbing anomalies. Chickens can lay eggs without shells, the yolk and white encased by the thinnest of membranes, or eggs that are so small that they look like they’ve been passed by a wren. These tiny eggs are usually not whole and usually contain no yolks. They can occur early in a hen’s laying cycle and will continue to form this way until her reproductive system regulates itself. Stress, infection, or even the presence of a foreign body in her oviducts (like the sand that forms a pearl in an oyster) can cause a chicken to lay an undersized egg. Before science provided explanations for this oddity (which are really natural functions of the chicken’s body as it corrects itself), they were just considered bad luck, and sometimes, dangerous.
Our ancestors had colorful names for extra small chicken eggs: “Fart eggs,” “dwarf eggs,” and “runt eggs.” In the Middle Ages, “witch eggs” or “cock’s eggs” had fearful and fantastic lore attached to them. Cock eggs were the seeds of evil. It was believed that if they were allowed to incubate, a serpent would hatch from them, or worse, a serpent-chicken hybrid, better known as a cockatrice. (Or basilisk; the two were often used interchangeably—but both could kill with a look.)
Fortunately, the appearance of a monster was not guaranteed; the egg had to be laid by a rooster and warmed by a toad. Since it was never certain that someone would witness the entire process, it was best to be safe and handle such eggs with extreme caution. Bringing it into the house ensured bad fortune of the worst kind, and one couldn’t simply destroy it. Eggs crushed under the wrong conditions could still result in trouble, like sickness or contamination. A cock egg could be neutralized only by tossing it over the family home without hitting the roof or by burning it.
In 1474 in Basel, Switzerland, a rooster was put on trial for laying an egg and was condemned to death. The rooster wasn’t tried as an animal but as a sorcerer in disguise. A clever witch, whatever his or her guise, could use such an egg as a supernatural weapon to bring harm to others. It’s uncertain as to whether the law in Basel believed that the egg in question would have hatched a cockatrice or if it was just a homegrown tool that would be used to lay a curse, but for the rooster, the results were fatal. The unfortunate bird was burned at the stake along with his purported progeny.
A few hundred years later in Victorian times, these tiny eggs took on a prettier, sweeter reputation as well as a more palatable name: fairy eggs. The fear of dangerous witchery was nearly dismissed, but a bit of magic still remained. (As late as 1892 it was still believed—at least in rural areas—that a chicken’s health could be bewitched, though this was easily righted by adding a piece of iron to their drinking water.) Fairy eggs were used for wishing rather than cursing, though the ritual was the same: Make a wish, then toss the egg over the house. If it didn’t make it, no harm done, but the wish might not be granted—fairies are, after all, perfectionists.
Should you ever have the (mis)fortune to find a fairy egg this spring as the chicks become hens and begin to lay, perhaps the best thing to do is to give it to the fairies. Write your desire on its tiny surface and place it under a toadstool. May the fae bless your spring celebrations and grant your fondest wishes!
Additional Reading
“Blog Post 139: Eggs.” New World Witchery: The Search for American Traditional Witchcraft, October 10, 2011. https://newworldwitchery.com/2011/10/10/blog-post-139-%E2%80%93-eggs/.
Chambers Book of Days: A Miscellany of Popular Antiquities In One Volume. Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap Publishers, 2004.
Gielau, James. “The Case of the Cursed Eggs.” Mind Your Dirt, April 17, 2016. https://mindyourdirt.com/tag/cock-egg/.
Murphy, Patrick J. Unriddling the Exeter Book of Riddles. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011.