Reviving the lost tradition of egg clapping

Over the Easter weekend, children around the world took part in egg hunts to celebrate one of the most important festivals in the Christian calendar.

But in one corner of Wales some partook in a slight variation of this popular tradition – egg clapping.

The activity was practiced on Anglesey in the 19th and 20th Centuries before undergoing a demise from about the 1960s as rural traditions began to disappear.

However, a local organisation is leading efforts to revive the practice on the island as part of wider efforts to celebrate and protect local heritage.

The exact origins of clapio wyau, or egg clapping, are unclear, but it appears to have originated some time in the 19th Century mainly in rural communities on Anglesey.

Children would visit neighbours with their wooden claps, recite a rhyme and ask for eggs – chicken eggs in those days – that they would take home to display on their mantelpiece.

The rhyme had some variations, but according to one telling by Museum Wales went:

Clap, clap, os gwelwch chi'n dda ga'i wŷ (Clap, clap, please may I have an egg)

Geneth fychan (neu fachgen bychan) ar y plwy' (Young girl (or young boy) on the parish)

The children would then be asked by the occupier "And who do you belong to":[]}