Paste egging at West Derby

Good Friday · West Derby, Lancashire

No longer kept

A Liverpool correspondent wrote to Hone on Good Friday 1826 about paste egging around West Derby, kept up by the young country people. Parties of four to a dozen, of both sexes, dressed up in fantastic disguises, with clothes turned inside out and patched, masks, veils and ribbons, and went round the farmhouses begging towards the Easter Sunday feast. One carried a basket for oatmeal cakes, another for eggs and a third a little box for money, and they sang lively songs to their hosts. On Easter Sunday evening the parties met at the village alehouse and spent what they had gathered.

these gifts are generally made up of great numbers of eggs and oatmeal cakes

From Hone's Every-Day Book, vol. 2, cols. 433-435. Read the original

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Folklore from the old calendars

Dressing the salt spring at Droitwich Still kept WorcestershireAubrey recorded that the people of Droitwich kept holiday every year on the day of St Richard, who was born in the town, and dressed their brine well with green boughs and flowers.
The witches’ Good Friday meeting Lore and belief LancashireGood Friday was believed in Lancashire to be the witches' great day of gathering.
The passion-dock pudding No longer kept Northern EnglandIn the north of England a herb pudding was a dish nobody went without on Good Friday, and its chief ingredient was the leaves of the passion-dock.
The Good Friday sermon at Paul’s Cross No longer kept LondonFor a long time a learned man chosen by the bishop preached every Good Friday afternoon at Paul's Cross, the timber pulpit on stone steps in St Paul's churchyard, on the Passion.
Creeping to the cross at Durham No longer kept County DurhamBefore the Reformation a gold crucifix kept inside the image of Our Lady of Bolton in Durham Abbey was taken out every Good Friday, and everyone in the church crept to it.
The clerk’s Good Friday cakes No longer kept Devon, DorsetIn some parishes of Dorset and Devon the parish clerk carried a few white cakes round to every house as an Easter offering.
The Good Friday fast in Connaught No longer kept ConnachtIn Connaught poor Catholic families kept Good Friday with a total fast, giving their children nothing from midnight to midnight, even babies at the breast.
Washing Molly Grime No longer kept LincolnshireIn Glentham church a tomb carries a carved figure the people called Molly Grime.
Hot cross buns Still kept England, LondonIn London and all over England, though not in Scotland, Good Friday began with the street cry of hot cross buns, and a plate of them on every breakfast table.
Good Friday bread Lore and belief EnglandBread baked on Good Friday was kept in the house all year, in the belief that a little of it grated into water would cure almost any illness, and diarrhoea especially.

Paste egging at West Derby

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