"Pennsylvania Dutch," and other essays

by Phebe Earle Gibbons

This myth of the rabbits’ eggs is very common among the Moravians. One of my “Dutch” acquaintances, born west of us in Cumberland County, and afterward living in Maryland, says that her mother told them when children to set their bonnets at Easter for nests for the rabbits’ eggs.

This is an old German myth. A gentleman from Switzerland says that he heard the fable there, and he thinks that it prevails all over Germany. Many or most of our early German emigrants into Pennsylvania seem to have come from or through the Palatinate. My friend before mentioned, who was born there, thus describes the custom at her former home. If the children have no garden, they make nests in the wood-shed, barn, or house. They gather colored flowers for the rabbit to eat, that it may lay colored eggs. If there be a garden, the eggs are hidden singly in the green grass, box-wood, or elsewhere. On Easter Sunday morning they whistle for the rabbit, and the children imagine that they see him jump the fence. After church, on Easter Sunday morning, they hunt the eggs, and in the afternoon the boys go out in the meadows and crack eggs or play with them like marbles. Or sometimes children are invited to a neighbor’s to hunt eggs.

Prof. Wackernagel, of Allentown, has kindly pointed out to me the antiquity of the myth. The old German goddess of spring was called Ostara (whence Easter). She rode over the fields in the spring in a wagon drawn by hares. (Our Pennsylvania rabbit is really a hare, as it does not burrow in the ground.) The egg is an emblem, says the professor, of the resurrection from the dead; so herein he finds heathenism and Christianity blended. However, the author of Das Festliche Yahr (Leipsic, 1863) considers the myth older than Christianity; for he says that in Thuringia, Hesse, Suabia, and Switzerland it is said now, as apparently in ante-Christian times, that the hare or Easter hare lays the eggs. Finally, one of my German friends finds the whole a myth of the renewal of life in the spring.

HALLOWEEN.

On the 30th of last October our farmer locked the gate on the road, lest it should be taken off. Therefore the Halloween visitors limited themselves to taking down bundles of corn-fodder in the field and building a fence across the road, and to propping up one end of the market-wagon on the fence. I am told of a person who once had his wagon taken apart, and the pieces put up into different trees, so that it was some time before all were found. In Lebanon County a similar custom is found. One of my acquaintances living in a small town says that they celebrate Halloween roughly,—hanging beets and cabbages at the doors, moving steps, taking gates from hinges, throwing corn. The speaker was born in Lehigh County, where nothing of this prevailed, and this fact constitutes one of the chief distinctions among our Pennsylvania Germans of Lancaster and Lebanon on one hand, and Lehigh, Berks, upper Montgomery, and probably Northampton on the other. In Montgomery a young “Dutchman” did not even know when Halloween is, and when I described our Lancaster County custom, said, “That ain’t any use.” Traces of similar observances of Halloween are found, however, in other regions. In Philadelphia the boys indulge in ringing front-door bells. In Harrisburg people who had wooden door-steps used to take them into the house, lest they should be carried off. Of Franklin County, beyond the Susquehanna, I am told that at Waynesboro’ it has been a favorite amusement at Halloween to gather store-boxes and build a fortification around the town pump, and collect wheeled vehicles around the public square. At Lockhaven, up the West Branch of the Susquehanna, my landlady was anxious that her cabbage should be housed, for fear that it would be carried off on Halloween.

My German acquaintances, before quoted, born in the Palatinate, do not report to me anything of this kind as existing in Germany at Halloween. One of them says, however, that at the time of putting up string-beans (which are preserved like sour-krout), children throw the strings into front doors. And Mr. Wollenweber, of Reading, also a native of the Palatinate, says that when the farm-work was over in October, they used to practise tricks. He has helped to take a wagon to pieces, and put it together again in a stable or barn. “We troubled ourselves very much,” he says. He adds that the boys were expected, when the fun was over, to come together and take it down again; but this is not the case in Lancaster County.

Can it be that some of these practices belong to the season of the year, and are a warning to the tardy to gather the fruits of the earth and their farm implements?

In his work called Die Alte Zeite, or Old Times, Mr. H. L. Fisher, of York, Pennsylvania, describes such pranks as played at weddings or home-comings “infares.” The boys hid the bridegroom’s horse in a quarry, and the young men’s saddles and bridles were put upon trees, straw-stacks, etc.

In the text I have spoken of Bellschnickel, who in “Pennsylvania Dutch” land takes the part of Santa Claus, being in fact the same personage; Bellschnickel, or Peltz Nickel, being St. Nicholas in furs. St. Nicholas day is not, however, Christmas eve. It is the 6th of December; but it is in Advent. One of my German friends thus describes Peltz Nickel: “In the Palatinate at Christmas they have the Christ-kindchen, which is a little girl dressed in white and riding on a donkey. I often made one myself, dressed in my mother’s wedding-veil. If you have no donkey, a boy is dressed to represent one and goes on all-fours. The Peltz Nickel is a boy leading; he is blackened, and has a beard and rattling chains. He gives a switch to the mother, which sticks behind the glass the whole year, if the children do not hide nor break it. This begins on the first Sunday of December, with Advent, and may be practised till Christmas. He carries apples and nuts. The children must kneel and say their prayers, and if they say them nicely they get some of these, and perhaps honey-cakes and candy, which the Christ-kindel and Peltz Nickel distribute; but they do not give the Christmas gifts.” She adds, “We only went to one or two houses.”