Come, butter, come

Ady, in his Candle in the Dark of 1655, told of an old Essex woman who came into a house where the maid had churned a long time and could not make the butter come. She said that in her young days, and her mother’s, they chanted a charm over the churn, and the butter came at once. The rhyme bade the butter come, for Peter stood at the gate waiting for a buttered cake, and was to be said three times. She said a learned churchman had taught it to her mother in Queen Mary’s days.