Rhyming Witchcraft:
The History and Use of Rhymes

By Elizabeth Yetter (Copyright 2006)

Rhymes and chants have been with us since our earliest history. They began as invocations to spirits and elements, and to gods and goddesses. They were a string of words that brought the shaman into altered states of reality. They were the early words of mothers, soothing their crying babies and frightened children. And they were the chants of hunters praying to animal spirits to feed their people. Soon these chants took on the dimension of rhyming. Rituals were performed and the words spoken became more pleasing to the gods.

When Christianity took power, the ancient Pagan practices were frowned upon. It was during this time that the Old Ways went underground. Slowly, after centuries, fragments of rhymes from these early Pagan rituals resurfaced and were called Nursery Rhymes.

Divination Rhymes

Numerous divination rhymes have survived the domination of Christianity. Mostly, they have been reduced to practices performed on the days of Saints, Christmas Eve, and Halloween, by adolescent girls seeking a husband. One such divination is to sow hemp seed on the night of Halloween and to afterwards look over your shoulder. There you should either see the physical body of the man you will marry or you will see his spirit-ghost.

"Hemp-seed I set, hemp-seed I sow,
The young man whom I love,
Come after me and mow."

Another love divination that we all know is:

"He loves me,
He don't,
He'll have me,
He won't,
He would if he could,
But he can't
So he don't."

This is to be said while plucking the petals off a daisy or while taking out the seeds from an apple.

A similar love divination to the one above is:

"He loves me,
Longs for me,
Desires me,
Wishes me well,
Wishes me ill,
Does not care."

Jumping rope has also been used as a method of divining the initials of one's future husband. This was done by reciting the alphabet, one letter per jump, and the letters on which one's feet got caught in the rope signified the letters of his initials.

Aside from the love divinations that have survived, there are divinations for making decisions. For one ancient divination rhyme, the seeker would write two courses of action on two pieces of paper. He would then lick the backs of the papers and stick them to the back of his hand. He would then say this popular rhyme:

"There were two blackbirds sat upon a hill.
The one was named Jack, the other named Jill.
Fly away Jack! Fly away Jill!
Come again Jack! Come again Jill!"

Next he would blow lightly upon the papers. The paper that flew away first would be his decision.

Another popular nursery rhyme, "Jack Be Nimble," was originally a rhyme said while jumping over a candlestick to determine one's luck for the coming year. If the candle stayed lit it meant that a good year was sure to follow. Similarly, children would stand in a circle and pass a candlestick around. Whoever was holding the candlestick when the flame went out would die within the year.

Charms

Fragments of charms can be found in many of the old nursery rhyme chapbooks. Of these, most were Christianized with the removal of the names of Pagan deities and the use of the names of Catholic Saints and Angels. One such example is the following charm that was repeated three times to churn butter:

"Come, butter, come,
Come, butter, come,
Peter stands at the gate
Waiting for a butter cake.
Come, butter, come."

Milkmaids would charm their cows into giving milk by saying:

"Cushy cow, bonny, let down thy milk,
And I will give thee a gown of silk;
A gown of silk and a silver tee,
If thou wilt let down thy milk to me."

Village boys who were hired by farmers during seed time to guard the seeds from birds, would sing out:

"Away, away, John Carrion Crow!
Your master hath enow
Down in his barley mow."

Also:

"We've ploughed our land, we've sown our seed,
We've made all neat and gay;
So take a bit, and leave a bit,
Away, birds, away!"

A popular seed planting charm that I've heard goes:

"One for the pigeon,
One for the crow,
One to rot,
And one to grow."

Counting Rhymes

Counting rhymes are said to have been started in ancient Pagan times as a means of selecting sacrifices such as was supposedly done by the Druid priests. Whether this is true or not, popular counting phrases such as "Eena, meena, mina, mo" can be traced to sets of Welsh counting words (A.J. Ellis, "Anglo-Cymric Score," 1877). Furthermore, the Welsh counting words can be traced back to Celtic numerals.

Oftentimes, words that seem like jibberish in the English language can be traced back phonetically to their original language and meaning. A nursery rhyme found in the United States is said to be the phonetic numbers of the "Plymouth Indians":

"Ain, ain, fethery, fip,
Arte, slatur, debbery, dick;
Antic, taintic, feathertic, bumpit,
Ain-bumpit, tain-bumpit, gee-kit."

According to Henry Carrington Bolton (The Counting-Out Rhymes of Children, 1888), counting rhymes or lots "were used to decide measures to be taken in battle, to select champions in individual contests, to determine the partition of conquered or colonised lands, in the division of spoil, in the appointment of magistrates and other functionaries, in the assignment of priestly offices, and in criminal investigations where doubt existed as to the real culprit." He goes on to say that they were also used in religious rites as well as for selecting sacrifices by "pagan savages." Mr. Bolton believes, and he may very well be correct, that ancient lot-casting practices were the beginnings of the counting rhymes as we know them today, which were performed by "witches and sorcerers."

In the hands of children, counting rhymes are used for making decisions, finding out who one's wife or husband will be, pairing off, and for finding out who's "out" and who's "it." What's more, the counting rhymes do not always need to include numbers:

"Eggs, butter, cheese, bread,
Stick, stock, stone dead!"

Names

The names Jack and Jill were considered heathen names and were sometimes replaced with more Christian names or the names of Apostles. The nursery rhyme "Jack and Jill Went Up the Hill" is believed to have been an ancient ballad, long since forgotten, which retold the Norse myth of Hjoki and Bil. Mr. S. Baring-Gould tells us in A Book of Nursery Songs and Rhymes that this nursery rhyme explains "the spots in the moon. . . In the 'Elder Edda' we are told
that Mani, the Moon, once took up two children of these names to him, as they were on their way returning from a well with a bucket of water between them."

Jack is also, in many nursery rhymes, the fool or wise-fool. He is shown as beginning an adventure, committing folly, or losing his path. He is often noted as representing the Fool card in the Tarot.

The name Tom, however, was often used to replace the god Thor. The coverup of the names was often done by Christians to "sanitize" the rhymes learned by their children. Another example of this is the name Sally Waters. Sally Waters, found in many nursery rhymes that come from marriage games of the peasantry, can be traced back to a British water goddess named Sul:

"Sally, Sally Waters, sprinkle in the pan,
Rise, Sally; rise, Sally, and choose a young man;
Choose to the east, choose to the west
Choose the pretty girl [or young man] that you love best.

"And now you're married, I wish you joy,
First a girl and then a boy;
Seven years after son and daughter,
And now young people, jump over the water."

The Present Day

In the past there have been a number of attempts to abolish nursery rhymes. Religious extremists in the United States and England have claimed that nursery rhymes lead children to the Devil and that the words are the work of witches.

Today, many historians laugh at the idea that nursery rhymes could possibly be associated with witchcraft. In fact, some claim that nursery rhymes are little more than jibberish made up by illiterate nannies who sang them as songs to lull little children.

Both the religious extremists and the historians of today have failed to do any real research into the workings of witchcraft. For example, do witches believe in the Devil? No. How did witches perform their spells and divinations long ago? How do they perform them today? They used and continue to use chants and rhymes.