Winter giveth the fields and trees, so old,
Their beards of icicles and snow;
And the rain, it raineth so fast and cold,
We must cower over the embers low;
And snugly housed from the wind and weather,
Mope like birds that are changing feather;
But storm retires, and the sky grows clear,
When thy merry step draws near.
Translation by Longfellow from the French of Charles D'Orleans, XV. century.
Her feet beneath her petticoat,
Like little mice steal in and out,
As if they feared the light:
And, oh! she dances such a way,
No sun upon an Easter day
Is half so fine a sight.
Sir John Suckling.
Many scarcely yet obsolete ceremonies and superstitions peculiar to the spring time of the year may likewise be traced to the ancient fire or sun worship, and other Aryan sources. That the sun rose on Easter-day, and danced with delight in honour of the resurrection of Christ, is evidently an ancient superstition engrafted on an orthodox Christian tenet. This sun-dancing belief is thus rebuked in the "Athenian Oracle":—
"Why does the sun at his rising play more on Easter-day than Whitsunday? The matter of fact is an old weak, superstitious error, and the sun neither plays nor works on Easter-day more than any other. It's true, it may sometimes happen to shine brighter that morning than any other; but, if it does, 'tis purely accidental. In some parts of England they call it the lamb-playing, which they look for, as soon as the sun rises, in some clear spring or water, and is nothing but the pretty reflection it makes from the water, which they may find at any time, if the sun rises clear and they themselves early, and unprejudiced with fancy."
Sir Thomas Browne, referring to this subject, says:—"We shall not, I hope, disparage the Resurrection of our Redeemer if we say that the sun doth not dance on Easter-day; and though we would willingly assent to any sympathetical exultation, yet we cannot conceive therein any more than a tropical expression."
These extracts are sufficient to show the "toughness" of the traditionary belief, and that its probable origin is of an earlier date than the Christian festivities of Easter. Some derive the term Easter from the Saxon Oster, to rise; others "from one of the Saxon goddesses, called Eastre, whom they always worshipped at this season." Others, again, prefer the Anglo-Saxon root, signifying a storm, "the time of Easter being subject to the continual recurrence of tempestuous weather."
The procuring of original or "need-fire," from flint and steel at this season, has been previously referred to. At Reading, in 1559, it appears by the churchwardens' account, yet extant, that 5s. 8d. was "paid for makynge of the Paschall and Funte Taper." Two years previously, one made for the abbey church of Westminster weighed three hundred pounds!
A quaint old writer, in a work called "The Festival," published in 1511, referring to these "need-fires," says:—"This day is called, in many places, Godde's Sondaye: ye knowe well that it is the maner at this day to do the fyre out of the hall, and the blacke wynter brandes, and all thyngs that is foule with fume and smoke shall be done awaye, and there the fyre was shall be gayly arayed with fayre floures, and strewed with grene rysshes all aboute."