There's a superstition in parts of England that if you eat an egg and don't crush the shell afterward, a witch will use it as a boat.
Across parts of England, particularly in rural areas with long folk memory, there persisted a belief that an empty eggshell left intact after eating could be commandeered by a witch as a vessel. She would sail it out to sea, raise storms, and sink ships. The preventive measure was simple and physical: crush the shell, pierce it, or break it thoroughly before discarding it. A smashed shell could not be sailed. The precaution was taken seriously enough that it was recorded in multiple 16th and 17th century texts on English folk belief and witchcraft.
## The Documented Record
The earliest substantial written record of this belief appears in Reginald Scot's "The Discoverie of Witchcraft," published in 1584. Scot, a skeptic writing to debunk witch persecution rather than endorse it, catalogued popular superstitions as part of his argument that the beliefs driving witch trials were folk nonsense rather than evidence of actual supernatural activity. The eggshell boat superstition was among the examples he recorded, which places it firmly in the documented English folk tradition of the late 16th century.
Thomas Browne, writing in "Pseudodoxia Epidemica" in 1646, also addressed the belief, noting that many people in England and other parts of Europe took pains to break their eggshells after use, specifically to prevent witches from using them. Browne approached the belief as a curiosity worth cataloguing, in keeping with his broader project of examining popular errors and superstitions through an empirical lens. He did not endorse the belief but took it seriously enough to note its widespread distribution.
## Where the Belief Came From
The association between witches and small vessels has roots in broader European witch mythology. Witches were credited with the ability to travel in unusual craft, including sieves, nutshells, and other objects too small or flimsy to function as real boats. This capacity was part of a larger framework in which witches existed partially outside physical laws, able to make small things large, turn natural objects to unnatural purposes, and travel by means unavailable to ordinary people.
The eggshell fit neatly into this logic. It is hollow, buoyant in principle, and shaped something like a hull. In a belief system already populated with witches sailing in sieves, an eggshell boat required no great conceptual leap. The connection to weather magic was also consistent with broader witch lore, where the power to raise storms at sea was a fairly standard accusation in coastal communities. Sailors and fishing families had particular reason to take storm-raising seriously. A smashed eggshell was a small price for insurance.
## Survival of the Belief
The practice of crushing eggshells persisted in English rural communities well into the 20th century, largely detached from its original rationale. People who crushed their eggshells often knew only that it was what you did, not why. The witch element had faded. The habit remained. This is how folk customs often travel: the reason erodes, the behavior persists.
The superstition also spread to North America with English settlers and shows up in American folk records from colonial and later periods. In some communities, the stated reason had shifted from witch boats to preventing bad luck more generally, or to stopping witches from using the shell for other purposes. The specific mechanism changed depending on who was telling it and when.
It is worth noting that crushing eggshells has a secondary practical benefit entirely unrelated to witchcraft: it discourages chickens from eating their own eggs. A whole eggshell, once accidentally broken in the nest, can teach a hen that eggs are edible, which creates management problems. Farmers who crushed shells before disposing of them were, intentionally or not, practicing reasonable husbandry alongside their folklore.
The belief remains one of the more vividly specific entries in the English folk record, a precise, actionable superstition with a named threat, a clear mechanism, and a simple countermeasure. It was also, as Reginald Scot might point out, completely unfalsifiable. No one could prove the ships that sank were not felled by uncrushed eggshells. That is how superstitions survive.