March 21.] EASTER EVE.
March 21.]
EASTER EVE.
On Easter Eve it was customary in our own country to light in the churches what was called the Paschal Taper. In Coates’s History of Reading (1802, p. 131) is the following extract from the Churchwarden’s accounts: “Paid for makynge of the Paschall and the Funte Taper, 5s. 8d.” A note on this observes, “The Pascal taper was usually very large. In 1557 the Pascal taper for the Abbey Church of Westminster was 300 pounds weight.”—Brand, Pop. Antiq., 1849, vol. i. p. 158.
On the eves of Easter and Whitsunday Font-hallowing was one of the very many ceremonies in early times. The writer of a MS. volume of Homilies in the Harleian Library, No. 2371, says, “in the begynning of holy chirch, all the children weren kept to be chrystened on thys even, at the font-hallowyng; but now, for enchesone that in so long abydynge they might dye without chrystendome, therefore holi chirch ordeyneth to chrysten in all tymes of the yeare, save eyght dayes before these evenys the chylde shalle abyde till the font-hallowing, if it may safely for perill of death, and ells not.”