Master for Webs

We heard from a listener who wondered how the phrase bell, book, and candle came to be a formula for cursing. The term isn't all that common nowadays, but literary types may still recognize it.

Sir Thomas Malory used the phrase as an angry vow in his Morte d'Arthur, when he wrote "I shall curse you with book and bell and candle." William Shakespeare borrowed the phrase in King John when a young man pledged "Bell, book and candle shall not drive me back."

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