Easter. Pace, pasch or pask, to give only a few of its many spellings, is the traditional word for Easter – a comparatively recent term in Scotland. It derives from Latin pascha which also gave rise to French pasche, pasque and Old Danish paska, further possible influences on Scots. For anyone who has difficulty in calculating the date of Easter, help is at hand; Helen Beaton in At the Back o’ Benachie (1915) explains:
First comes Candlemas, an’ then the new meen,
The first Tuesday efter that is aye Fastern’s Een,
That meen oot an’ the neist meen’s hicht,
An the first Sunday efter that is aye Pess richt.
Some families still roll Easter-eggs, come sun, rain, sleet or hail. David Mitchell’s History of Montrose (1866) tells us that At Pasch the Burneses had always the best dyed eggs to throw in the Links. The Aberdeen People’s Journal (12 April 1958) recalls We eest tae gaither the flooers tae colour oor pess eggs. Gorse flowers turn even the most peelie-wallie eggs a rich, warm brown. Surprisingly, the tradition seemed under threat as early as 1937 when, according to Mary Banks’ British Calendar Customs, Though the custom of rolling “paiss” eggs still holds in Bervie, it is slowly, I think, dying out. In the olden times, however, it was carefully kept and the eggs were rolled on the “paiss braes” – a name they still bear – situated up the haughs near Crookity.
John Calder in Sketches from John o’ Groats (1842) tells us that The poor, who had no poultry of their own, went round among their neighbours a day or two before, collecting what they called their “peace eggs”, but the New Shetlander of March-April 1949 refers to The now almost vanished custom of gjaa’n [going] paes-eggin.