If you have many eggs you can have many cakes.
He who has many eggs scatters many shells.
To throw an egg at a sparrow.
To borrow trouble for eggs not yet hatched.
Half an egg is worth more than all the shell.
A drink after an egg, and a leap after an apple.
A rotten egg in his face.
In the early mythology, the egg, as a bird was hatched from it, and as it
resembled seeds, nuts, &c., from which new plants come, was regarded as
the great type of production. This survives in love-charms, as when a girl in
the Tyrol believes she can secure a man's love by giving him a red Easter
egg. This giving red eggs at Easter is possibly derived from the ancient
Parsees, who did the same at their spring festival. Among the Christians the
reproductive and sexual symbolism, when retained, was applied to the
resurrection of the body and the immortality of the soul. Hence Easter eggs.
And as Christ by His crucifixion caused this, or originated the faith, we have
the ova de crucibus, the origin of which has puzzled so many antiquaries; for
the cross itself was, like the egg, a symbol of life, in earlier times of
reproduction, and in a later age of life eternal. These eggs are made of a
large size of white glass by the Armenian Christians.
CHARMS OR CONJURATIONS
TO CURE OR PROTECT ANIMALSTo keep domestic animals from straying or being stolen, or falling ill,
they are, when a gypsy first becomes their owner, driven up before a fire by
his tent. Then they are struck with a switch, which is half blacked with coal,
across the back, while the following is repeated:--
"Ač tu, ač kathe!
Tu hin mange!
Te Nivasa the jiánen
Ná dikh tu ádálen!
Trin lánca bin mánge,
Me pçándáv tute:
Yeká o devlá, ávri
O Kristus, trite Maria!""Stay thou, stay here
Thou art mine!
And the Nivasi when they go
Thou shalt not see them!