Saliva, the ordure, urine, catamenial fluid, blood, bile, calculi, bones, skulls,—all were mysterious, and therefore were “medicine,” especially when obtained from a saint or lama.

This belief subsisted among tribes and communities long after civilization of a high type had been attained, and is probably what Saint Mark alludes to in an ambiguous passage, when he says, “It is not the things which enter a man’s body, but those which come out of it, which defile him.”

Again, it is not from the bodies of the living alone, but from the corpses of the dead likewise, that medicinal preparations were derived; but in the latter case there enters into the question another expression of thought, shared by primitive man in all countries and in all ages; i. e., that the part is ever the representative of the whole, and that when the whole cannot be obtained, the part will be equally efficacious. Hence the precious care with which, in all communities in a low state of culture, the bones, teeth, rags of clothing, and other exuviæ of the sacred dead have been treasured.

LII.
EASTER EGGS.

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.)