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EASTER 109
Father Camelli, in his 'History of Customs,' tells us, that, during
Easter and the following days, hard eggs, painted of different colors,
but principally red, are the ordinary food of the season. In Italy, Spain,
and in Provence, says he, where almost every ancient superstition is retained,
there are in the public places certain sports with eggs. This
custom he derives from the Jews or the Pagans, for he observesit common
to both.
The learned Hyde, in his 'Oriental Sports,' tells us of one with
eggs among the Christians of Mesopotamia on Easter Day, and forty
days afterwards.. .
In the North of England, continues Hyde, in Cumberland and
Westmoreland, boys beg, on Easter Eve, eggs to play with, and beggars
ask for them to eat. These eggs are hardened by boiling, and tinged
with the juice of herbs, broom-flowers, etc. The eggs being prepared,
the boys go out and play with them in the fields, rolling them up and
down, like bowls upon the ground, or throwing them up, like balls, into
the air. Eggs, stained with various colors in boiling, and sometimes
covered with leaf-gold, are at Easter presented to children, at Newcastle-upon-Tyne,
and other places in the North, where these young
gentry ask for their Paste Eggs at this season. Paste is plainly a corruption
of Pasque, Easter.
In a curious Roll of Expenses of the Household of Edward I, communicated
to the Society of Antiquaries, 1805, is the following item in
the Accounts of Easter Sunday: 'Four hundred and a half of eggs, eighteen
pence'; highly interesting to the investigator of our ancient manners,
not so much on account of the smallness of the sum which purchased
them, as for the purpose for which so great a quantity was procured on
this day in particular,i. e., in order to have them stained in boiling, or
covered with leaf-gold, and to be afterwards distributed to the Royal
Household." Robert Haven Schauffler in "Easter; Its History, Celebrati
Spirit and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse."
The connection between Easter and the hare springs from the latter's
connection with the moon. Easter, inasmuch as its date depends
upon the moon, is in a sense a lunar holiday. Now, from very ancient
times the hare has been a symbol for the moon.. .
Even in America we may see in the confectioners' windows the
hare (or rather a rabbit) wheeling his barrow full of eggs or drawing
one large one as a sort of triumphal chariot. In some parts of Europe
the Easter eggs are made up into cakes in the shape of hares.. .
Among English popular customs celebrating Easter are many
traces of the hare myth.. .
The Easter hare myth has reached America. Here, however, as in
other countries where the hare is scarce or unknown,it has been transformed
into its near relation the rabbit. Perhaps this was originally
due to the confectioners, who are rarely experts in natural history.
William S. Walsh's "Curiosities of Popular Customs."