You guys remember, “I have seen the acorn before the oak”, right? When Madoc came to visit Eva in the prologue of The Cruel Prince?
Apparently one method of tricking a changeling child into revealing their identity is to pretend to cook a meal for many people in an eggshell. The changeling, upon seeing this, will, in astonishment, say
Acorn before oak I knew,
An egg before a hen,
But I never heard of an eggshell brew
A dinner for harvest men.
or something along those lines, thus implicating him.
This is from a Celtic fairytale titled Brewery of Eggshells and is from Thomas Crofton Croker’s first volume of Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland which was published in 1825.
I think Holly Black might have seen this Facebook post because it has the EXACT same words in it and was posted in 2012. 6 years before the publication of The Cruel Prince.
Thoughts?
P.S. I don’t think anyone else has interpreted the quote in this way but @rhysiedarling has written a particularly interesting piece where she refers to it as an example of foreshadowing.