The constant use of the egg in effecting these cures by transplantation awakens a suspicion that the origin of the pretty custom of giving away Easter eggs, beautifully colored, was induced by something more than charitable impulse. Nearly every usage that remains among us as a game or a play derives from a serious ancestry. Easter was pre-eminently the festival of the Christian church which most tenaciously preserved the rites of paganism. It was, for some reason, looked upon as the season when the human body, as well as the house occupied by that body, should undergo a thorough cleansing, and get rid of all its ailments. The coloring of the eggs suggests color-symbolism, an essentially heathen idea, still retained among ourselves in full vigor, under many Protean disguises.

When the Puritans gained control of the government of Great Britain, the coloring of eggs, as we may imagine, was temporarily discontinued. The “picking” of the eggs is a survival from one of the innumerable forms of divination by lot in which the pagan mind of Rome and elsewhere delighted.

Therefore we may reasonably conclude that the custom, as transmitted to us, is a “survival” from a religious usage intended to effect the transference by lot of the diseases with which the egg-players were afflicted.

“The oldest, most familiar, and most universal of all Easter customs are those associated with eggs. Hundreds of years before Christ, eggs held an important place in the theology and philosophy of the Egyptians, Persians, Gauls, Greeks, and Romans, among all of whom an egg was the emblem of the universe, and the art of coloring it was profoundly studied. The sight of street boys striking their eggs together to see which is the stronger and shall win the other, was as common in the streets of Rome and Athens, two thousand years ago, if we are to believe antiquarians, as it is in any of our American cities to-day. These eggs, now called Easter eggs, were originally known as Pasche eggs, corrupted to paste eggs, because connected with the Paschal or Passover feast. One reason for associating the egg with the day on which our Saviour rose from the dead may be, that the little chicks entombed, so to speak, in the egg, rising from it into life, was regarded as typical of an ascension from the grave.

“In the north of England it is customary to exchange presents of Easter eggs among the children of families who are on intimate terms, a custom which also prevailed largely among the ancients, and to which the sending of Easter cards and other offerings, which has become so popular here of late years, may be traced.”—(From the “Press,” Philadelphia, Penn., April 21, 1889.)

“Thirty years ago, it was a common practice for all elderly people to be bled or cupped each spring.”—(“Folk-Medicine of the Pennsylvania Germans,” Hoffman, in Trans. Amer. Phil. Soc., 1889.)

“To hang an egg laid on Ascension Day in the roof of the house, preserveth the same from all hurt.”—(Scot, “Discoverie,” p. 193.)

“The modern custom, practised in Tripoli, of a widow transferring her misfortunes from herself by delivering four eggs to the first stranger she meets.”—(Dalyell, “Superstitions of Scotland,” p. 110.)

“It comes to be thought desirable to have a general riddance of evil spirits at fixed times, usually once a year, in order that the people may make a fresh start in life, freed from all the malign influences which have been long accumulating among them.”—(“The Golden Bough,” Frazer, vol. ii. p. 163.)

“Modern Jews sacrifice a white cock on the eve of the Festival of Expiation, nine days after the beginning of their new year. The father of the family knocks the cock thrice against his own head, saying, ‘Let this cock be a substitute for me,’ etc.”—(Idem, vol. ii. p. 195.)

The negroes of Guinea seem to entertain notions on this subject worthy of incorporation in this chapter: “The sending of the parrot’s egg signifies, Choose the kind of death which would be easiest to you; otherwise, we will choose for you.”—(“Fetichism,” Baudin, p. 23.)

In many portions of Europe there are still in existence rustic observances which, under the mask of games, preserve to the mind of the anthropologist the former rite of human sacrifice. Among these may be mentioned one from Sweden, in which a boy—who in the past ages was evidently the victim selected for sacrifice, and to bear to the gods the messages of the community,—goes about from house to house, carrying a basket, in which he collects gifts of eggs and the like. (Frazer, “The Golden Bough,” vol. i. p. 78.) It seems to be logical to imagine that these gifts, sent to the deities to propitiate them, also served the purpose of carrying away from the donors any ailments with which they were afflicted,—the same purpose for which Easter eggs were broken, and the transfer of illness brought about by lot. The insignificance of the egg as an offering, in comparison with the benefits to be expected, offers no argument in rebuttal of the opinions just expressed. We should bear in mind the proneness of the devotee to reduce the money value of his sacrifice or oblations to the minimum. This is peculiar to no cultus, confined to no latitude. The worship of the chicken-god was apparently very widely ramified, especially among the divisions and subdivisions of what we have chosen to call the Aryan family. To several of these branches, notably the Wendish and the Celtic, the chicken was, perhaps, the principal god; and he remains to this day in his proud position, whence the first missionaries were unable to dislodge him, at the summit of the sacred tree or spire of the village church.

Naturally enough, what we should expect to see upon the recurrence among these tribes of a festival in which their principal spiritual powers were to be invoked to expel all forms of disease and evil from among their worshippers, would be the sacrifice of chickens; but the poverty or the niggardliness of the suppliant in many cases suggested a substitution of the cheaper offering, the egg, which may, in its turn, have been replaced by the feathers of the bird.

In parts of India, to this day, the scapegoat of the community is a cock. “In southern Konkan, on the appearance of cholera, the villagers went in procession from the temple to the extreme boundaries of the village, carrying a basket of cooked rice, covered with red powder, a wooden doll, representing the pestilence, and a cock. The head of the cock was cut off at the village boundary, and the body was thrown away. When cholera was thus transferred from one village to another, the second village observed the same ceremony, and passed the scourge on to its neighbors.”—(“The Golden Bough,” Frazer, vol. ii. p. 191.)

“When spring comes,” said Pantagruel to Panurge, “I will take a purge.”

“Les œufs sont partout fatidiques.”—(“Les Primitifs,” Réclus, p. 356, art. “Les Kolariens du Bengalou.”)