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It
is the universal custom, among the common masses as well as among the
distinguished, for men to soak the women on Easter Monday. On Tuesday, and
every day thereafter until the time of the Green Holidays – Pentecost –
the women doused the men.
The first recorded Polish writing on Dyngus Day; a medieval Polish
historian wrote of what he termed the "Oblewania"
Barely
had the day dawned on Easter Monday when I woke the boys and gathered some
water to start throwing it on the girls. Up with the Piwezyny! (eiderdown)!
There was screaming, shouting, and confusion. The girls are shrieking and
hollering, but in their hearts they are glad because they know that she who
isn't gotten wet will not be married that year. And the more they are
annoyed, the more we dump water on them calling, Dyngus – Smigus! Then we
had to change our clothes because there wasn't a dry thread on the girls and
we boys were not better off.
The spirit of Poland's Dyngus is captured in this description from the
Poznan region during 1800s
At
Bellingen, NSW, Australia, it is an ancient Easter Monday custom (dating
from a recent year) to put away the washing, microwave
Good Friday's hot
cross buns, make a cup of tea and write to one's friends abroad with
tales of ancient folk customs.
However,
Australia is not the only country with a heart-warming sense of culture and
community: thankfully there are other places of the world where Easter
Monday is commemorated just as richly. Poland is one of these, and
Dyngus
Day is its Easter Monday. It is also
called:
Smigus, Smingus, Smyngus, Splash
Monday, or Wet Monday (Mokry
Poniedzialek or Lany Poniedzialek).
Poland's Dyngus, or Smigus, Day is said to hark back to the baptism of the founder of
Polish Christianity, Prince
Mieszko
I (c. 935
-
992), and his entire court, on Easter Monday, 966. Dyngus is
an ancient
celebration which is still observed both in country villages and the big
cities, with singing, pranks, visiting friends' houses, and the custom of
dousing.
 The
custom of pouring water is an ancient spring rite of cleansing,
purification, and fertility – at this time of year there are
drenching customs enacted in Sri Lanka and Thailand during their
respective New Year celebrations. In a Spring custom of pagan
(pre-Christian Slavic) times, the Poles 'confronted' (dingen)
Nature with their pouring of water and switching with pussy willows to
purify themselves for the year ahead. The alternative name for the day
comes from smiganie,
meaning 'switching'.
Boys,
don't do this at home. On Easter Monday, at around 5 a.m., the men
creep through a neighbour's window or chimney, often with the
collusion of the male family head, into the rooms where the sleeping
womenfolk are abruptly awakened by being doused with water. The girls,
naturally enough, reciprocate in kind. In cities, where people are
refined and perhaps girls more aware, this custom tends to be
practised by the use of a sprinkle of water or cologne.
What does
'Dyngus' mean?
 According
to Zygmunt Gloger's 19th-Century Encyklopedia
Staropolska, the name for this day can be traced back to a medieval
form of the word dingnus, meaning 'worthy, proper, or suitable',
and perhaps the German usage of dingen, 'to come to an agreement,
evaluate or buy back' – there is an association here with the German
word dingeier, meaning 'the eggs which are owing'.
The arrival of Christianity in Poland had
a profound effect on this nation that is still overwhelmingly Catholic.
Prince Mieszko I
(duke of the Polans, c. 935 -
992; grandfather of England's famous King Canute) was
baptised on Easter Monday, 966, uniting all of Poland under the banner of
Christianity, and in the first millennium, baptisms were celebrated
exclusively during Eastertide,
particularly on Holy
Saturday and the Octave
of Easter ...
Baptism
and other sprinkling or drenching rites pre-date Christianity and were known
in many cultures and religions such as those of Isis and Mithras – even
Halloween's apple bobbing, it has been suggested, might echo ancient
Celtic pagan water rites. The early Christian Church Father, Tertullian
(born in Carthage about 160 CE), wrote:
[Non-Christians]
ascribe to their idols the imbuing of waters with the self-same efficacy
[of purification]
... For washing
is the channel through which they are initiated
into
some sacred rites – of some notorious Isis or Mithras ...
Moreover,
by carrying water
around, and sprinkling
it, they everywhere expiate country-seats, houses, temples, and whole
cities: at all events, at the Apollinarian and Eleusinian games they are baptised;
and they
presume that the effect of
their doing that is their regeneration and the remission
of the penalties due to their perjuries.
Among
the ancients, again, whoever had defiled himself with murder, was wont to
go in quest of purifying waters.
Tertullian,
On Baptism, Ch. 5
Dyngus Day is also celebrated at South Bend, Indiana, USA
Easter
Monday elsewhere
In
Hungary, today is called Husvét
Hetfoje or Vizbeveto ('Water
Plunge Monday'). Young men would splash girls with water in streams and
fountains. In return, as a ransom, the maids gave the boys coloured eggs,
and on the Tuesday, drenched the boys as well.
In
merrie olde England, men and women indulged in the ancient custom of
'lifting' or 'heaving'. On Easter Monday, in places like Lancashire,
Cheshire, Staffordshire and Warwickshire, men lifted the women into the air
and carried them a distance. On the Tuesday, the women would retaliate by
doing the same. It is believed by some scholars that the original meaning of
the game was to represent the resurrection of Jesus Christ, though some suggest it
might be to do with 'raising' the crops in Springtime.
In
Italy, Easter Monday is La Pasquetta, Little Easter, a day for
picnicking, enjoying delicious traditional Italian fare such as a antipasto
of a hard-boiled egg with salt and local bitter herbs such as radicchio,
aurugula or fennel.
The
people of the Czech republic celebrate
Velikonocni Pondeli or Pomlazka
today. Like their Polish
counterparts, boys wove willow or birch branches into small whips called dynovacka,
which they decorated with ribbons and flowers. With these they struck girls
on the legs, and the girls had to hand over decorated eggs in order to stop
them.
In
18th-century Birmingham, England, children of the charity schools
flocked to their church, where the first comers stood hand in hand, backs to
building. There they were joined by their companions, till they had the
church surrounded. As soon as the hand of the last touched the hand of the
first, the party broke up and walked to the town's only other church, and
the ceremony was repeated.
In Hallaton, Leicestershire, England, today's the day for the big Hare
Pie Scramble and Bottle Kicking. In time immemorial,
a woman was saved from a charging bull when a hare ran across the path of
the angry beast. She thanked the hare by killing it and making a hare pie
which she shared with the locals. Now the hare pie is made with beef, but
it's still given to the locals; in fact, it is scattered over Hare-Pie
Bank and the locals fight over it. Following this, there is a football match
between the two parishes of Hallaton and Melbourne, using three small beer
barrels instead of balls.
Whatever
you do with this day, seize it!
The
article above first appeared in the free Wilson's Almanac of April
21, 2003
The
Biddenden Dole
The
Biddenden Maids and the Chulkhurst Charity
 The
Biddenden
Maids,
Elisa
(or Eliza) and Mary Chulkhurst, were
conjoined twins
(sometimes called Siamese twins) who were born in Biddenden, Kent, England in 1100. In the
popular imagination of the time, the death of King William
Rufus in that year at Lammastide was associated
with the Maids and other 'anomalous' occurrences.
They were
joined at the hip, although illustrations also depict them joined at the
shoulder. Mary and Elisa died in 1134 and left their estate for
an unusual charity, associated with Easter Monday. It is said that the death of one was followed in a few hours by the death of
the other.
On Easter Monday (some sources say Easter Sunday) some six
hundred so-called Biddenden cakes are traditionally distributed among
parishioners who attend the afternoon services at the church, as well as some about hundred
loaves of bread, each of three and a half pounds weight, and each
accompanied by a pound and a half of cheese. Beer also used to be distributed
until the 17th Century but the bread, cheese and cakes are still allocated. As well as the picture of the sisters on the cakes their names appear, and on the apron of one is written the number 34
– the age at which Elisa and Mary died.
The endowment comes from the earnings of an estate known as
the Bread and Cheese lands, which, according to the best authorities, were
some centuries ago left to the parish for this purpose by the Chulkhurst
sisters (some sources give their surname as Preston).
The Biddenden cakes have impressed on them the figures of
the sisters. What we know of the story of the Biddenden Maids largely comes
from a handbill that used to be printed and sold on the spot, entitled
'A Short but Concise Account of Elizabeth and Mary Chalkhurst'.
We
note, too, that a similar story has been told of two females whose figures
appear in the pavement of Norton St. Philip Church in Somersetshire,
England. Edward
Hasted in his History of Kent (1798) has examined the Biddenden
myth, and decides that it arose simply from the rough impression on the
cakes, which had been printed in this manner only within the preceding fifty
years.
More
Barwick in Elmet, UK
The town of Barwick in Elmet, UK, is said to have the
tallest Maypole in Britain – around 87 feet. Every three years it is
raised, on the Tuesday after the Spring Bank Holiday at Barwick in Elmet,
W.Yorks. Ladder parties raise it without the aid of modern machinery. A
ceremony of Lowering the Maypole is held on Easter
Monday, and the pole is raised again on the Spring Bank Holiday. You
can see this maypole in photographs old and new at the Barwick Historical
Society website.
When is Easter?
Easter is on a different date each year
according to the Northern Vernal Equinox (may
fall on March 20,
21 or 22) and the
phases of the moon.
From
Wikipedia:
“The
timing of Easter depends on the Jewish Pesach, in English Passover,
which commemorates the sparing of the Hebrew first-born, as recounted in Exodus,
since it is during this holiday that Jesus is believed to have been
resurrected.
The date of Easter
“Easter
and the holidays that are related to it are moveable
feasts, in that they do not fall on a fixed date in the Gregorian calendar (which follows the
motion of the Sun and the seasons). Instead, they are based on a lunar
calendar like that used by the Jews. At the First Council of Nicaea in 325 it was
decided that Easter would be celebrated on the Sunday after the 14th day
of the first lunar month of spring (in theory, the Sunday after the first full moon
on or after the day of the vernal
equinox). Eventually, all churches accepted the Alexandrian method of
computing Easter, which set the northern hemisphere vernal equinox at 21
March (the actual equinox may fall one or two days earlier or later), and
the date of the full moon was to be determined by using the Metonic
cycle. A problem here is the difference between the western churches
and the Eastern Orthodox Churches. The former now use
the Gregorian calendar to calculate the date of
Easter, while the latter still use the original Julian calendar. The World Council of Churches proposed a
reform of the method of determining the date of Easter at a summit in
Aleppo, Syria,
in 1997. This reform would have eliminated the difference in the date
between the Eastern and Western churches. The reform was due to be
implemented starting in 2001, but it failed. See Reform of the date of Easter.
“Computing
the date of Easter, known as computus,
is somewhat complicated. The Wiki page explains the traditional tabular
methods, but also has algorithms such as the one developed by the famous
mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss.
Source: Wikipedia
When is it this year? One explanation can
be found in Chambers:
“Easter Day is
always the first Sunday after the full moon which happens upon or next
after the 21st day of March; and if the full moon happens upon a Sunday,
Easter Day is the Sunday after.”
Chambers, R, (Ed.), The Book of Days: A miscellany of popular antiquities in connection
with the calendar, etc, W & R Chambers, London, 1881 (1879
Edition is online; See The English Year:
A Personal Selection from Chambers' Book of Days)
Or, probably better:
“Easter
Sunday is the Sunday following the Paschal Full Moon (PFM) date for the
year. In June 325 A.D. astronomers approximated astronomical
full moon dates for the Christian church, calling them Ecclesiastical Full
Moon (EFM) dates. From 326 A.D. the PFM date has always been the EFM
date after March 20 (which was the equinox date in 325 A.D.).”
Source
with some explanation, and discussion of popular errors
Lunabar will put moon phases, equinoxes, solstices, etc
on your desktop
The date of Easter (US Naval
Observatory)
The date of Easter (Anglican
calculator)
Timing of the
Crucifixion and the Resurrection (Christian Churches of God)
Index of articles on folklore and other topics
Folklore, customs, pre-Christian origins of:
Epiphany Candlemas/Imbolc
Hall Sunday
Collop Monday Shrove Tuesday/Pancake
Day
Ash
Wednesday & Lent Mid-Lent Care Sunday Painful Friday Lazarus Saturday
Palm
Sunday Spy
Wednesday Maundy Thursday Good Friday Easter Saturday Easter
Easter Monday Easter Tuesday Hocktide Ascension Rogation Days Whitsunday/Whitsuntide
Corpus
Christi May Day/Beltaine
Lammas/Lughnasadh
Michaelmas
Halloween/Samhain
Martinmas
Advent Christmas Eve Christmas
More at Articles Index
Hundreds of feast
days of saints, gods and goddesses at Wilson's Almanac Book of Days
Saint Martin
and Martinmas (Hollantide)
St Valentine's
Day
Lady Day; strange
Tichborne lore; the penitent thief
Poland's Dyngus
Day, and other Easter Monday customs
Saints Medard and
Swithin: rain prognostication
St James,
folklore and the pilgrimage of Compostela
St Patrick's Day
St Brendan the
Voyager
The
'Seven Sleepers' saints
The
Horned God and Western Saints
St Ursula
& the Bear Goddess
How are other ancient gods like Jesus?
The Virgin Mary as Goddess
Pre-Christian
pagan water rituals
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