An Easter egg, good dame

In Cheshire children went round the village begging eggs for their Easter dinner, singing a short song to the farmer’s wife that asked for an egg, bacon, cheese, an apple or anything that would make them merry. In Cumberland, Westmorland and other parts of the north, boys went begging on Easter Eve for eggs to play with, and beggars asked for them to eat. The eggs were boiled hard and coloured with the juice of herbs and broom flowers, then rolled along the ground like bowls or thrown up like balls in the fields.