Note 4 — Chapter IV · SOUTH SLAVONIAN AND OTHER GYPSY WITCH-LORE.—THE WORDS FOR A WITCH—VILAS AND THE SPIRITS OF EARTH AND AIR—WITCHES, EGG-SHELLS, AND EGG-LORE—EGG PROVERBS—OVA DE CRUCIBUS.

In all parts of Eastern Europe, as in the West, many people are not only careful to burn the parings of their nails4 and the combings of hair, for fear lest witches and imps should work sorcery with them to the injury of those from whom they came, but they also destroy the shells of eggs when they have eaten their contents. So A. Wuttke tells us in his book, “Der Deutsche Volks Aberglaube der Gegenwart,” 1869: “When one has eaten eggs the shells must be broken up or burned, or else the hens will lay no more, or evil witches will come over them.” And in England, Spain, the Netherlands, or Portugal, there are many who believe or say that if the witches can get such shells from which people have eaten, unbroken, they can, by muttering spells, cause them to grow so large that they can use them as boats. Dom Leitas Ganet (“Dona Branca ou a Conquista do Algarve,” Paris, 1826), however, assures us that is a very risky thing for the witches, because if they do not return home before midnight the shell-boat perishes, “whence it hath come to pass that many of these sorceresses have been miserably drowned.”