“There are so very many strange conceptions about the egg: on the one hand it is pure and sacred and the bearer of radiant new life; on the other hand there is the secret inside, out of which anything may come to life; good and joyful, or bad and filled with hatred.

In ‘white magic’ you may give an egg to the incubus, whereupon its power is broken and you will not be troubled by it anymore. At the turn of the century nobody in High Albania dared to set an egg for hatching without first drawing the sign of the cross on it; otherwise some monstrous creature might creep out of it.”

Newall, Venetia An egg at Easter: a folklore study Routledge, 1971

This image is from a booklet produced by the American Folklife Center in 1982, long out of print but available at their website as a PDF. It gives a brief description of European egg decorating traditions and explains the traditional wax-and-dye techniques for producing elaborate designs.

Online Collections and Presentations — The American Folklife Center