Whilst looking for information in the index for the Somerset and Dorset Notes and Queries about Shaftesbury, the eyes of staff here at Dorset History Centre were taken by an entry just above those for the town, which intriguingly read, in all-caps ‘”SHACKLE-EGG” DAY’. With our interest piqued, we had to know more and headed into volume 1 of the Notes and Queries…
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Unsurprisingly perhaps, given the time this is being published, we were immediately told that this was a shrove-tide custom involving (also unsurprisingly) eggs.
The author immediately revealed that the custom (as it was), had existed “about fifty years ago” but had “since become obsolete“. This puts the custom as having existed in, and before, the 1840s. We are also told that it was the “practice in most of the smaller village schools“, implying that it didn’t really make it into the ‘mainstream’ culture of the time.
Children were told to bring an egg to school, and at the end of morning school, these eggs “having been previously marked with the owner’s name in ink” were gathered in a corn sieve and shaken until the shells broke.
The custom told that the last egg to break (or not) would mean the owner would be awarded a small prize, and duly installed as the class hero or heroine for the day.
Of course, this innocent and harmless bit of fun at Shrove time did occasionally (possibly mythically) lead to problems caused by (according to the author of the piece) “the depravity of human nature“, whereby would-be cheaters would take the devious action of hard-boiling their egg to ensure a victory. Such an instance would have seen the “young sinner” being taken to a court of his young peers and “thrown out of court accordingly“.
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So, was this custom a common thing? The Notes and Queries author is unsure, describing it as a custom in “some of the parishes in South Somerset“, but whether it extended any further was uncertain. Equally uncertain was where this custom had originally come from. Whilst the author of the piece speculates upon some possible origins (a cheap way for teachers to obtain eggs to make pancakes, or from a carnival tradition of giving up food to some “spiritual master“) it seems that no-one really knows the origins of Shackle-Egg.
Which leads us onto one final question – why was it even called Shackle-Egg in the first place? In local parlance, the term ‘shackle’ was used to describe the noise of small things, such a pebbles or marbles, when they were shaken together. It is assumed that this was the noise heard when the eggs were jostled in the sieve and this noise was how the game was named. Our author points out that it had the same root as the term ram-shackle, presumably coming from the old Anglo Saxon “sceacan” meaning ‘to shake’.
So, will you be participating in a game of Shackle-Egg this Shrove Tuesday? If not, what are you doing instead? Let us know in the comments below!