It was she who was most particular about the dyeing of his Easter eggs
and the ritual of hanging up his stocking on Christmas Eve. She had
wanted to go on dyeing eggs for him at Easter and hanging up his
stocking on Christmas Eve, even when he was twelve years of age and
could not be expected to tolerate such things any longer. He liked the
Easter ceremonial better, perhaps, than that of Christmas. His mother
would bid Uncle Matthew take him out of the town to the fields to
gather whin-blossoms so that she could dye the eggs to a pretty brown
colour. Tea-leaves could be used to dye the eggs to a deeper brown than
that of the whin-blossoms, but there was not so much pleasure in taking
tea-leaves from the caddy as there was in plucking whin-blossoms from
the furze-bushes. The Logans bought their Easter eggs, already dyed,
from old Mrs. Dobbs, the dulce-woman, but John disliked the look of her
eggs, apart from the fact that his mother would not permit him to buy
them. Mrs. Dobbs used some artificial dyes which stained the eggshells
a horrible purple or a less horrible red, and John had a feeling of
sickness when he looked at them. Mrs. MacDermott said that if the eggs
were to crack during the process of boiling, the dye would penetrate
the meat and might poison anyone who ate it; and even if the shells
remained uncracked, the dye would soil the fingers and perhaps soil the
clothes. She wondered at Mrs. Logan!...
And on Easter Monday, she and Uncle Matthew and Uncle William would go
to Bryson's field where there was a low mound covered with short grass,
and from the top of this mound, he would trundle his Easter egg down
the slope to the level ground until the shell was broken. Then he would
sit beside his mother and uncles, and eat the hard-boiled meat of the
egg while Uncle Matthew explained to him that he was celebrating an
ancient Druidical rite.