They made us presents of coloured Eggs and Cakes of Easter Bread."

Easter Day, says the Abbé d'Auteroche, in his Journey to Siberia, is set apart for visiting in Russia. A Russian came into my room, offered me his hand, and gave me, at the same time, an egg. Another followed, who also embraced, and gave me an egg. I gave him, in return, the egg which I had just before received. The men go to each other's houses in the morning, and introduce themselves by saying, "Jesus Christ is risen." The answer is, "Yes, he is risen." The people then embrace, give each other eggs, and drink a great deal of brandy.

The subsequent extract from Hakluyt's Voyages (1589) is of an older date, and shows how little the custom has varied

"They (the Russians) have an order at Easter, which they alwaies observe, and that is this: every yeere, against Easter, to die or colour red, with Brazzel (Brazil wood), a great number of Egges, of which every man and woman giveth one unto the priest of the parish upon Easter Day in the morning. And, moreover, the common people use to carrie in their hands one of these red Egges, not only upon Easter Day, but also three or foure days after, and gentlemen and gentlewomen have Egges gilded,* which they carry in like maner. They use it, as they say, for a great love, and in token of the Resurrection, whereof they rejoice. For when two friends meete during the Easter Holydayes, they come and take one another by the hand; the one of them saith, 'The Lord, or Christ, is risen ;' the other answereth, 'It is so, of a trueth ;' and then they kiss, and exchange their Egges, both men and women, continuing in kissing four dayes together." Our ancient voyage-writer means no more here, it should seem, than that the ceremony was kept up for four days.+

EASTER HOLIDAYS.

EASTER has ever been considered by the Church as a season of

great festivity.

By the law concerning holidays, made in the time of King Alfred the Great, it was appointed that the week after Easter should be kept holy.

Fitzstephen, as cited by Stow, tells us of an Easter Holiday amuse

* Chandler, in his Travels in Greece, tells us that in the city of Zante he saw "a woman in a house, with the door open, bewailing her little son, whose dead body lay by her, dressed, the hair powdered, the face painted, and bedecked with gold-leaf."

+ "On Easter Day they greet one another with a kiss, both men and women, and give a red Egg, saying these words, Christos vos christe. In the Easter Week all his Majesty's servants and nobility kiss the patriarch's hand, and receive either guilded or red eggs, the highest sort three, the middle two, and the most inferior one."-Present State of Russia (1671).

In the Museum Tradescantianum (1660), we find, "Easter Egges of the Patriarchs of Jerusalem."

ment used in his time at London: "They fight battels on the water A shield is hanged upon a pole (this is a species of the quintain) fixed in the midst of the stream. A boat is prepared without oars, to be carried by the violence of the water, and in the forepart thereof standeth a young man ready to give charge upon the shield with his lance. If so be he break his lance against the shield and do not fall, he is thought to have performed a worthy deed. If so be that without breaking his launce he runneth strongly against the shield, down he falleth into the water, for the boat is violently forced with the tide; but on each side of the shield ride two boats furnished with young men, which recover him that falleth as soon as they may. Upon the bridge, wharfs, and houses, by the river side, stand great numbers to see and laugh thereat." Henry, in his History of Britain, thus describes another kind of quintain: "A strong post was fixed in the ground, with a piece of wood, which turned upon a spindle, on the top of it. At one end of this piece of wood a bag of sand was suspended, and at the other end a board was nailed. Against this board they tilted with spears, which made the piece of wood turn quickly on the spindle, and the bag of sand strike the riders on the back with great force, if they did not make their escape by the swiftness of their horses."

Blount, in his Jocular Tenures, records an ancient custom at Coleshill, in the county of Warwick, by which, if the young men of the town can catch a hare, and bring it to the parson of the parish before ten o'clock on Easter Monday, the parson is bound to give them a calf's head and a hundred of eggs for their breakfast, and a groat in money. The mayor, aldermen, and sheriff of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, accompanied by great numbers of the burgesses, used anciently to go every year, at the Feasts of Easter and Whitsuntide, to a place without the walls called the Forth, a little mall, where everybody walks, as they do in St James's Park, with the mace, sword, and cap of maintenance carried before them. The young people of the town assembled there on these holidays, at Easter particularly, played at hand-ball, danced, &c., but they were no longer countenanced in their innocent festivity by the presence of their governors, who, no doubt, in ancient times, as the Bishops did with the inferior clergy, used to unbend the brow of authority, and partake with their happy and contented people the seemingly puerile pleasures of the festal season.

Belithus, a ritualist of ancient times, tells us that it was customary in some churches for the Bishops and Archbishops themselves to play with the inferior clergy at hand-ball, and this, as Durand asserts, even on Easter Day itself. Why they should play at hand-ball at this time, rather than any other game, Bourne tells us he has not been able to discover; certain it is, however, that the present custom of playing at that game on Easter holidays for a tanzy-cake has been de rived thence. Erasmus, speaking of the proverb, "Mea est pila," tha is, "I've got the ball," tells us that it signifies "I have obtained the victory; I am master of my wishes." The Romanists certainly erected a standard on Easter Day, in token of our Lord's Victory; but i would perhaps be indulging fancy too far to suppose that the Bishop and governors of churches, who used to play at hand-ball at thi

season, did it in a mystical way, and with reference to the triumphal joy of the season. Certain it is, however, that many of their customs and superstitions are founded on still more trivial circumstances, even according to their own explanations of them, than this imaginary analogy.

Tansy, according to Selden in his Table Talk, was taken from the bitter herbs in use among the Jews at this season. Our meats and sports, says he, have much of them relation to Church works. The coffin of our Christmas pies, in shape long, is in imitation of the cratch,* i.e., rack or manger, wherein Christ was laid. Our tansies at Easter have reference to the bitter herbs; though at the same time 'twas always the fashion for a man to have a gammon of bacon, to show himself to be no Jew.

In Coles's Adam in Eden (1657), the author, speaking of the medicinal virtues of tansy, says: "Therefore it is that Tanseys were so frequent not long since about Easter, being so called from this herb tansey: though I think the stomach of those that eat them late are so squeamish that they put little or none of it into them, having altogether forgotten the reason of their originall, which was to purge away from the stomach and guts the phlegme engendered by eating of fish in the Lent season (when Lent was kept stricter then now it is), whereof worms are soon bred in them that are thereunto disposed, besides other humours which the moist and cold constitution of Winter most usually infects the body of man with; and this I say is the reason why Tanseys were and should be now more used in the Spring than at any other time of the year, though many understand it not, and some simple people take it for a matter of superstition so to do."

Johnson, in his edition of Gerard's Herball (1633), writes: "In the spring time are made with the leaves hereof newly sprung up, and with egs, Cakes, or Tansies, which be pleasant in taste, and good for the stomacke; for, if any bad humours cleave thereunto, it doth perfectly concoct them and scowre them downewards."

Tansy cakes are thus alluded to in Shipman's Poems. He is describing the frost of 1654

“Wherever any grassy turf is view'd,

It seems a Tansie all with sugar strew'd."

It is related in Aubanus's description of ancient rites in his country, that there were at this season foot-courses in the meadows, in which the victors carried off each a cake, given to be run for, as we say, by some better sort of person in the neighbourhood. Sometimes two cakes were proposed, one for the young men, another for the girls; and there was a great concourse of people on the occasion. This is a custom by no means unlike the playing at hand-ball for a tansy cake,

Among the MSS. in Bene't College, Cambridge, is a translation of part of the New Testament in the English spoken soon after the Conquest. The 7th verse of the 2d chapter of St Luke is thus rendered: "And layde hym in a cratche, for to hym was no place in the dyversory."

receive a written testimony, which secures them from a repetition of the ceremony for that day. On the Tuesday the women claim the same privilege, and pursue their business in the same manner, with this addition that they guard every avenue to the town, and stop every passenger, pedestrian, equestrian, or vehicular."

That it is not entirely confined, however, to the Northern counties, may be gathered from the following communication which the author received from a correspondent in 1799

"Having been a witness lately to the exercise of what appeared to me a very curious custom at Shrewsbury, I take the liberty of mentioning it to you, in the hope that amongst your researches you may be able to give some account of the ground or origin of it. I was sitting alone last Easter Tuesday at breakfast at the Talbot in Shrewsbury, when I was surprised by the entrance of all the female servants of the house handing in an arm-chair, lined with white, and decorated with ribbons and favours of different colours. I asked them what they wanted their answer was, they came to heave me. It was the custom of the place on that morning; and they hoped I would take a seat in their chair. It was impossible not to comply with a request very modestly made, and to a set of nymphs in their best apparel, and several of them under twenty. I wished to see all the ceremony, and seated myself accordingly. The group then lifted me from the ground, turned the chair about, and I had the felicity of a salute from each. Í told them, I supposed there was a fee due upon the occasion, and was answered in the affirmative; and, having satisfied the damsels in this respect, they withdrew to heave others. At this time I had never heard of such a custom; but, on inquiry, I found that on Easter Monday, between nine and twelve, the men heave the women in the same manner as on the Tuesday, between the same hours, the women heave the men. I will not offer any conjecture on the ground of the custom, because I have nothing like data to go upon; but if you should happen to have heard anything satisfactory respecting it, I should be highly gratified by your mentioning it. THO. LOGGAN.”

Another writer in the Gentleman's Magazine for July 1783, having inquired whether the custom of lifting is "a memorial of Christ being raised up from the grave," adds: "There is at least some appearance of it; as there seems to be a trace of the descent of the Holy Ghost on the heads of the Apostles in what passes at Whitsuntide Fair, in some parts of Lancashire, where one person holds a stick over the head of another, whilst a third, unperceived, strikes the stick, and thus gives a smart blow to the first. But this, probably, is only local."

In a General History of Liverpool, reviewed in the same Magazine for 1798, it is said: "The only antient annual commemoration now observed is that of lifting; the women by the men on Easter Monday. and the men by women on Easter Tuesday."

Pennant's MS. records: "In North Wales the custom of Heaving upon Monday and Tuesday in Easter week, is preserved; and Monday the young men go about the town and country, from house to house, with a fiddle playing before them, to heave the women. the Tuesday the women heave the men."

Οι

99

BY

HOKE DAY.

some this is thought to have been the remains of a heathen custom, which might have been introduced into Britain by the Romans, who had their Feast of Fugalia.

Hoke Day, according to the most commonly-received account, was an annual festival said to have been instituted in memory of the almost total destruction of the Danes in England by Ethelred, A.D. 1002. Bryant, however, has shown this to be destitute of any plausible support. The measure proved to have been as unwise as it was inhuman, for Sweyn the next year made a second expedition into England, and laid waste its Western Provinces with fire and sword. The conquest of it soon followed, productive of such misery and oppression as this country had, perhaps, never before experienced. A holiday could, therefore, never have been instituted to commemorate an event which afforded matter rather for humiliation than for such mirth and festivity.*

Douce's MS. Notes supply the following

"Verstegan, with no great probability, derives Hock-tide from Heughtyde, which, says he, in the Netherlands means a festival season; yet he gives it as a mere conjecture. The substance of what Spelman says on this subject is as follows. Hoc Day, Hoke Day, Hoc-Tuesday, a Festival celebrated annually by the English, in remembrance of their having ignominiously driven out the Danes, in like manner as the Romans had their Fugalia, from having expelled their kings. He inclines to Lambarde's opinion that it means deriding Tuesday, as Hocken, in German, means to attack, to seize, to bind, as the women do the men on this day, whence it is called 'Binding Tuesday.' The origin he deduces from the slaughter of the Danes by Ethelred, which is first mentioned in the Laws of Edward the Confessor. He says the day itself is uncertain, and varies, at the discretion of the common people, in different places; and adds, that he is at a loss why the women are permitted at this time to have the upper hand.

"It is historically mentioned in the following authorities—

"In the Laws of Edw. Confessor, c. 35, as above stated. But these are to be suspected.

"Henry of Huntingdon mentions that, in the year 1002, Ethelred caused all the Danes in England to be massacred on St Brice's Day, as he had heard many old people relate in his infancy. Spelman remarks that St Brice's Day being on the 13th of November, it could not be the origin of the Hoc-tide His similar objection to the day after the Purification must stand for nothing, as he appears to have mistaken what is said on that subject in the Laws of Edw. Confessor, but to prove that it could not have been St Brice's Day, he cites an old rental, which mentions a period between Hoke Day and the Gule of August.

"Simeon Dunelmensis, and Ethelred Rievallensis, mention the massacre of the Danes by Ethelred, 1002, but say nothing relating to Hoctide.

"Radulphus de Diceto, and Knighton, speak of this massacre having taken place on St Brice's Day, but are also silent with respect to Hoctide. The Saxon Chronicle does the same. R. de Diceto places it in 1000. Florence of Worcester, and Langtoft, speak generally of the massacre; and Robert of