Eggs
Eggs
In many cultures and ancient religions throughout the world, eggs have long symbolised rebirth, fertility and continuing life, and been seen as ideal in representing the emergence of Spring from the dark Winter months. The Greeks, Romans, Persians and Chinese exchanged coloured eggs at their Spring festivals, and the early Christians used them to embody Christ’s Resurrection and adopted them as gifts at Easter when they were brought to church to be blessed. They were a forbidden food in Lent, of course.
The chocolate Easter Egg is now the norm as a gift for Easter, becoming available in our shops as soon as Christmas is out of the way. This manifestation is hardly more than a hundred years old and displaced the widespread tradition of giving a hard-boiled version of the real thing which had been decorated in bright colours. These eggs would appear on breakfast tables or be concealed about the house and garden for children to find...hidden by the Easter hare or rabbit, naturally.
To decorate an egg nowadays it is easy to buy commercial dyes, but in former times a whole variety of natural produce was used for the desired effect. Boiling an egg inside a covering of onion skins is one simple method of dyeing, but gorse blossom, cochineal, logwood chips, spinach leaves and anemones are others which add immense variety in colour. Put any of these under the onion skins with an egg and it is easy to make patterns similar to using wax pencils or candles. A white design can be made on a coloured egg by scraping away the dye with an engraving tool or a stylus, and so on ...
Colouring and decorating eggs is international. A Polish legend has the Virgin Mary colouring eggs to amuse the infant Jesus, and in Romania there is a story that the Roman soldiers at the Crucifixion were given eggs in the hope that they would treat Christ with more compassion. The Romanians dye theirs red because it is said that these soldiers’ eggs were stained with Christ’s blood. Red, of course, is also a symbol of life and the Chinese are known to have made gifts of red eggs back in 900 BC!
But why do hares and rabbits feature so much in the imagery and folklore of Easter? Well, according to the Venerable Bede, the term Easter developed from Eostre, a Saxon Goddess of Spring and the Dawn, whose sacred animal was the hare. The rabbit, which has completely replaced the hare in some places, seems to have become confused with the folklore of the hare at some stage in the past and simply stayed.
In the north of England, decorated Easter eggs were often known as Pace or Paste Eggs. The really elaborate ones may have been kept as ornaments, but generally they would be eaten or used in the many egg games associated with Easter. Children would go house visiting to collect the eggs, reciting rhymes and songs in exchange for their spoils. In some cases there would also be a Pace Egg Play...
This page is part of our Beginners’ Guide: British Folk Customs From Plough Monday to Hocktide.
