Covid Journal, Day 29: Easter Sunday

Good Easter morning, my friends!

It was 50 degrees and cloudy with little showers from time to time, not a good day for egg hunts and the like. Just as well since most of those events have been called off, I'm sure. Except those people have at their own homes. I remember egg hunts inside the house on Easter, anyone else ever done that? One year we could not find one egg and gave up after hours of searching. A few weeks later, the egg was found, using a different sense than sight! Whew, what a smell!

We were protective of our Easter baskets. Much effort went into keeping any other child in the family from helping themselves to the candy. I'm afraid my candy was always gone very quickly, and I might have been one of those scouting for unguarded candy. I might. Our baskets usually had the same things every year: one chocolate bunny, lots of jelly beans, some of those larger candy-coated marshmallow eggs that I didn't like but ate anyway, a few peeps, and maybe some chocolate covered eggs in maple (yuck), cherry nut or coconut fillings.

These weren't the homemade chocolate-covered eggs sold everywhere by civic and church groups today, but those pre-wrapped ones by Brach chocolates or an off-brand. Which thought has made me wonder, what in the world happened to all the eggs made but not sold this year? There must be thousands of them in this county alone.

Speaking of today's weather, folklore has it that if it rains on Easter Sunday it will rain for the next 7 Sundays, so there's your weather forecast for the foreseeable future.The upside is that rain on Easter is supposed to bring good crops in the following months. A different version of this belief is that if it rains on Easter it will rain 7 days in a row. This one is new to me so I can't testify to its veracity, but the 7 Sundays one, yes I have seen that happen many times.

And yet another version: "Rain on Good Friday and Easter Day, brings lots of grass but little hay." Which I interpret to mean the hay will grow but be impossible to harvest because of wet weather. That certainly happened last year. Farmers struggled to get their hay put up, some not getting the first cutting until July. Usually hay is dropped in my area around Memorial Day, so it was a stressful time--then the second cutting was sparse due to the July drought. A bad hay year all-round.

Another superstition says "green Christmas, white Easter" and in some areas of the country (and even in my own state) this has certainly proved true this year. We saw flurries the other day, and some friends in the higher elevations had measurable ground coverage of the white stuff.

A friend on Facebook, folklorist and storyteller Peter Stevenson of Wales, posted a version of this story online this morning. It's a new story to me, and I thought you might enjoy it too.

Melangell's Lambs

Brochwel, the Prince of Powys, upon a certain day in the year of our Lord 604, was hunting in a place called Pennant. His hounds started a hare, and pursued it into a dense thicket. Following them into the thicket, he saw a beautiful maiden on her knees praying devoutly to God. The hare was lying on the folds of her garment, facing the hounds boldly.

The prince shouted, "Catch her, catch her!" but the more he urged his hounds on, the further did they retreat, and at last they fled away, howling with terror. The prince, astonished at the strange behaviour of his hounds, turned to the maiden and asked her who she was.

"I am the daughter of a King of Ireland," she answered, "and because my father desired to wed me to one of his chiefs, I fled from my native soil, and, God guiding me, came to this desert place, where for fifteen years I have served God without seeing the face of any man." The Prince enquired her name, and she replied that she was called Melangell (the Latin form of the name is Monacella).

Thereupon the Prince broke forth in these words, "O most worthy Melangell, I perceive that thou art the handmaiden of the true God. Because it hath pleased Him for thy merits to give protection to this little wild hare from the attack and pursuit of the ravening hounds, I give and present to thee with willing mind these my lands for the service of God, to be a perpetual asylum and refuge. If any men or women flee hither to seek thy protection, provided they do not pollute thy sanctuary, let no prince or chieftain be so rash towards God as to attempt to drag them forth."

Melangell passed the rest of her days in this lonely place, sleeping on bare rock. Many were the miracles which she wrought for those who sought refuge in her sanctuary with pure hearts. The little wild hares were ever under her special protection, and that is why they are called "Melangell's lambs." Even now, if a hare is pursued by hounds and someone shouts after it, "God and Melangell be with thee," it will escape.

 From The Welsh Fairy Book by W. Jenkyn Thomas with illustrations by Willy Pogány (1908), which can be found online at the Sacred Texts website.

Enjoy this Easter day, my friends!

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.