“The Brewing of Eggshells” is an old Irish folktale, passed down through oral tradition and recorded in the 19th century. The version most people point to comes from
Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms, and Superstitions of Ireland by Jane Wilde, published in 1887.
This version is adapted and told by ©2014 Sean Buvala. The transcript is below. As a transcript, it contains errors in grammar and punctuation.
The audio of the story is below the transcript.
The Brewing of Eggshells (cleaned transcript)
It’s a good thing. My story is called The Brewing of Eggshells.
Mrs. Sullivan’s baby didn’t breathe like a newborn baby.
It had kind of a raspy… didn’t breathe like a newborn baby. And it hadn’t started that way, for when the baby was born, the baby breathed with that gentle… oh, you know newborns. Look around this room.
Right? Newborns, you know, sometimes you have to check if they’re breathing. You know what I mean? Everybody say yes. But not this baby.
This baby had this terrible, terrible breath. Now again, it didn’t start that way. It had that soft breath.
But one day, when Mrs. Sullivan went out after having this new baby and leaving the baby in the crib—she went out to take care of business—when she got back in, that beautiful baby boy that she had, that one that was so beautiful and soft and all that newborn-y stuff, that baby that was so tender, so beautiful, seemed to have changed in the little bit of time she was outside. Because the baby that was in there now was kind of ugly and was kind of skeleton-y. It was really thin and really kind of… the skin was gray and the eyes were set, and there was that breath that went on.
There was that breath.
Now, Mrs. Sullivan knew that sometimes the good people might take a baby and replace it with a changeling. They might put that in there.
She thought, “That couldn’t happen to my own baby, could it? Is that possible?”
So she told her friends that it seems that my baby has changed. They said, “Oh, for sure. You have a changeling in there, and you better take care of it.”
They gave her all the ways to take care of it.
They said you could take that baby and put it on a hot grill and grill it on both sides. Then that little changeling would disappear.
You could do that.
The little one says, “Oh my gosh, you know what you could do, Mrs. Sullivan, is you could get one of those pokers from the blacksmith that are red-hot. What you could do is you take those red-hot pokers and those tongs and you pull that baby’s nose right off. Then when you do that, that changeling will disappear and your baby will come back.”
But that breath… no.
Still, it was her baby, and she couldn’t quite figure out what she was going to do with this thing that breathed so bad and was so young and so small.
Well, one day, when she was out trying to figure this out, she met the gray lady.
Now, the gray lady was one that knew all the ways to take care of bad things that were happening. She could tell you when your cow was going to die. She could tell you when your house was going to burn down. She could tell you when bad things were going to happen. She could give you things to make you breathe easier. She could really help you.
Gray Ellen is what they called her.
Gray Ellen said, “You know, there is a way to get rid of this baby. I can tell from your look that this is bothering you. Have you tried everything?”
“Well, I haven’t really done anything yet,” said Mrs. Sullivan, “because he seems to be my baby, and I’m just… I don’t want to hurt my baby.”
She said, “You have to take care of this. You can’t let a changeling stay in the crib. You can’t do it.”
“So here’s what you do. When you go home, and you want to get rid of this, you take a poker. You stick it in the fire so that the poker is red, burning hot. Then you put on the biggest pot of water you possibly can. You put that over the fire. Then you go and take as many eggs as you can from those hens. You take as many eggs as you can. You crack them open. You throw out the insides. You take those shells. You throw them into the pot. You let those eggshells brew. You let them in. That changeling will reveal itself when you brew those eggs.”
Well, that felt really odd to Mrs. Sullivan.
But that breathing from that baby… aww. That heavy rattling sound.
So she went home.
There was that baby breathing.
She took a pot of water. Put it on the fire. She took a poker. She put it into that fire so that it would start to get hot.
She went out and she got the eggs from the hens, as many as she could. She opened them up. She threw out the insides.
She took that bunch of eggshells. She put them in the pot.
“What are you doing?” The baby spoke.
“What are you doing, mother?”
Now this surprised her, because a newborn should not speak.
“What are you doing over there, mother?”
Without trying to look panicked, she said, “I’m brewing eggs.”
“You’re brewing eggs? I’ve never seen anyone brew eggs, mother. That’s very interesting. Why are you brewing eggs? Are you brewing just the shells? I can smell just the shells.”
“Oh yes, baby. It’s just the shells that I’m brewing in there. That’s all of it.”
She looked down to see that red poker. It wasn’t quite hot long enough.
She said, “So, baby, what do you think about the smell?”
“Oh, mother, that’s very interesting. I’ve never seen anything like that. The smell is really interesting. Are you just going to brew them all day?”
While waiting for that poker to get hot, she tried to keep the baby in conversation.
The baby that shouldn’t be talking.
She said, “So you’re really interested in the shells? I think those could be really interesting.”
“Mother, why are you brewing those eggs? Am I going to get a chance to have some of those? Those look pretty good.”
She looked down, and there was that red poker. It was getting hotter and hotter.
That baby was breathing faster and faster.
She picked up that poker. She picked it up and turned around to go right towards that baby, as she had been told by Gray Ellen.
She took that poker, and she took it, and she ran towards that baby with that burning red poker to stab her own baby right in the face.
She went—and she tripped.
The poker fell past.
She looked up, and the changeling was gone.
There. There. Right in the crib was that beautiful baby boy.
That one who was soft and delicate, and fairy music appeared around so that she could once again love that baby.
That is the story of The Brewing of Eggshells.
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Photo by Jonathan Kemper on Unsplash