Christian Legends

Old legends blended folklore and Christian beliefs and firmly attached the egg to the Easter celebration.

One legend concerns the Virgin Mary. It tells of the time Mary gave eggs to the soldiers at the cross. She entreated them to be less cruel and she wept. The tears of Mary fell upon the eggs, spotting them with dots of brilliant color.  These were the first pysanky.

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Another legend tells of when Mary Magdalene went to the sepulcher to anoint the body of Jesus. She had with her a basket of eggs to serve as a repast. When she arrived at the sepulcher and uncovered the eggs, the pure white shells had miraculously taken on a rainbow of colors.

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(the rest of the legends on this page are from Vira Manko’s “Ukrainian Folk Pysanka,” my translations from the Ukrainian text)

    A very long time ago God sent a terrible plague.  Entire villages were dying, and nobody knew the cure for the plague.  One woman – a widow – had ten sons, and the plague took nine of them.  The woman suffered much, and prayed to God so ardently, that he took pity on her and said: she could save her youngest boy if she made him a shirt embroidered with crosses and flowers, so that the Angels of Death would recognize him.

    The woman saved herself, and her son, but now she suffered even more, because she knew that the plague was continuing to kill people indiscriminately. She wanted to tell everyone about God’s cure, but she couldn’t, because God had told her this: if you tell other people, you will not be able to save yourself.

    Easter approached, and long before the holiday the woman began decorating eggs with dyes and giving them to people, to have them blessed and eaten.  She painted on them crosses, flower, leaves.... The eggs were so nice, that the people didn’t eat them, but saved them and placed those pysanky in a prominent place in their homes.

    In this way did the wise woman save her people, as well as her son and herself, from death.

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    The first pysanky were written by the Virgin Mary.  When Jesus was little, he liked to play with pysanky.  Mary wrote pysanky for him with a golden stylus.  When Christ was taken away to be crucified, the Virgin Mary wrote them in the dark, but they turned out very beautiful, because, while writing them, she was crying, the tears pouring out of her eyes; wherever the tears fell on the pysanky, colorful dots were formed.  That is why pysanka-makers still put dots on their pysanky.

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    A poor man was carrying a basket of eggs to market on the day Jesus Christ was being led to be crucified. The cross was heavy, and Christ was collapsing beneath his burden.  The man felt pity for Christ; he left his basket by the side of the road, and went to help Jesus carry the cross, carrying it all the way to the place of crucifixion.

    When the man returned to his basket, he saw that the eggs had all been transformed into pysanky and krashanky.

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    When Christ was crucified, the blood from his wounds dripped onto the stones below the cross.  Each of these rocks became a red krashanka.  Virgin Mary stood near the crucified Christ, and her tears dripped onto the stones; these became pysanky.

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    When Jesus Christ rose from the dead, he said to the soldiers who were guarding his tomb, “Go forth and tell all the people that Christ has risen, and here is a sign so they will believe you.” With this the Savior took some pysanky from his tomb and gave them to the soldiers. Thus began the custom of making pysanky for Easter.

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