Here's what historian Ronald Hutton, in his usual long-winded but comprehensive manner, has to say about the origins and development of the custom:

>>>It was in north-west England that the habit of collecting food or money for the [Easter] feast developed into its most elaborate form, whereby an entertainment was provided as part of the solicitation. The actors were young people somewhat older than those who went singing and begging in the southern part of the region or (more rarely) adults. They seem to have been first recorded in the cotton-making district of south-eastern Lancashire, at the end of the eighteenth century, as 'young men grotesquely dressed, led by a fiddler, and with one or two in female attire'. Their performances varied according to their powers and the tastes of their patrons, but usually included dancing and the recitation of 'quaint' verses. They were known as 'peace-eggers', a term which will be discussed below." During the early nineteenth century they were found commonly in the textile-making communities of the Lancashire Pennines and those just over the border in Yorkshire, but also in villages and towns of Cheshire, Westmoriand, and Cumberland. After the mid-century they became rarer and also more inclined to perform on Easter Monday, as the motive for doing so became more purely one of raising money or getting beer, rather than finding food for the festival. They survived into the twentieth century around Blackburn in Lancashire, in the Upper Calder valley of Yorkshire, in the Furness peninsula, and amongst communities in the south-cast fringe of the Cumbrian mountains. For most of this period they were known either as Pace-Eggers or Jolly Boys. // Their repertoire naturally became both more varied and at times more sophisticated in the nineteenth century. At Kendal lads merely blackened their faces and paraded the streets dragginng old tins and buckets and chanting:

Trot, 'errin, trot, 'orn,
Tris Good Friday tomorn."

Around Blackburn young men also blackened their faces, but put on animal skins in addition to increase their disguise. More commonly in Lancashire and Yorkshire the groups, which numbered from three to twenty, wore ribbons or coloured paper, masks, or 'fantastic garbs'. Some bore wooden swords. In the cotton district in the earlier part of the century it was common for groups to fight each other if they collided on their circuits; in 1842 one youth was killed in such a brawl. The most ubiquitous character among them was an individual with a blackened face called Tosspot, who carried a container which in the earlier decades was used to collect eggs, and in later times money, by way of reward. His comrades sang, usually patriotic ballads, and danced (or 'capered'). // Most colourful were the customs adopted from winter pastimes of the same period. One was the carrying of a horse's head on a pole, very similar to the Old Horse or Old Ball of the Derbyshire Christmas players. This one, likewise named Old Ball, went about the industrial towns on either side of the Forest of Rossendale, taken by about six men with blackened faces or masks. It consisted of an actual horse's skull with bottle-ends for eyes, clashing jaws, and a sackcloth body to cover the performer, and followed the practice of its winter cousins in cavorting and chasing onlookers. A more widespread borrowing was of the southern English Mummers' Play, versions of which were performed by Pace-Eggers across their nineteenth-century range from Cheshire to Cumberland. The only distinctively regional touches to the surviving texts are the presence of Tosspot and the common addition of a song referring to 'Pace-Egging Time'. Unlike the Christmas presentations, these tended to occur in daylight. In the Calder valley the boys would start out early enough to earn money from engineers on their way to work. Perhaps the most distinctive tradition was that evolved by the youngsters of Far and Near Sawrey, two villages nestling among the oak woods beyond Lake Windermere in Westmortand. The chief literary fame of this community is that it became the home of the children's writer Beatrix Potter, and in view of this it is wholly appropriate that in the twentieth century the actors were all girls, who opened with a chorus of

Now we're jolly pace-eggers all in one round,
We've come a pace-egging, we hope you'll prove kind;
We hope you'll prove kind with your eggs and strong beer
For we'll come no more near you until the next year
Fol de diddle ol, fol de dee, fol de diddle ol dum day.

Individual verses were then sung to introduce the characters: Old Betsy Brownbags, Jolly Jack Tar, Lord Nelson, Old Paddy from Cork, and (of course) Old Tosspot. A standard hero-combat play followed. The reference to 'strong beer' and the complete lack of any local identity to the characters indicate how far the play had travelled across boundaries of age-groups, gender, and communities to reach this form. // Pace-Egging would make an admirable subject for a monograph of the sort recently devoted to wakes, northwestern morris, and rushbearing, all pastimes carried on in the same communities at the same time by much the same people. The same social changes, of growing affluence and wider horizons, which sapped the vigour of these, also put paid to the Pace-Eggers. By the 1920s the custom was moribund. Only one part of it, the plays, was easily susceptible to a revival, and this occurred in the Calder Valley in 1931-2, produced by a request for readings of the texts for radio broadcasts upon folk culture. Schoolteachers duly set their pupils to work performing versions from Brighouse and Midgley, and they are still presented by schools and children's theatres in the villages on either side of Halifax upon Good Friday. Although almost certainly derived from a winter custom, the plays' central actions of death and resurrection were equally well suited to the Easter season. // Pace-Egging, however, had a much broader context in the nineteenth- century north, sharing its name with a very common children's custom which derived in turn from an ancient seasonal pastime of ruling elites. This has been referred to above, and consisted of the decoration of eggs and their use as presents, adornment for homes, and items in competitions. It became practicable for commoners as soon as standards of living reached the point at which the eggs were no longer essential as foodstuffs. None the less, northern Britain was the region in which this practice became most firmly established, under the various names of peace-, pace-, pacs-, paste-, or pasch- eggs. All were probably based upon the adjective 'paschal', from the Latin name for Easter. The term 'pace egg' is first mentioned in early eighteenth- century Lancashire and dyed or gilded specimens were first recorded as popular in Northumberland in the 1770s. In the 1950s they were still made by or given to children in many areas of north-western England and in a few communities in south-cast Wales." In between those two periods they were observed as customary in all the six northern English counties and in Nottinghamshire, up the east coast of Scotland and in the Shetlands, and (apparently as an outlying example) in Somerset. They were also found in County Down, a part of the north of Ireland which has easy communications with north-western England. Rural and urban communities of all kinds enjoyed them. Often the simplest means of colouring the eggs was to boil them with onion skins, which gave a rich yellow hue to the shells; at the Durham port of Hartlepool in the 1920s, they were wrapped in gorse flowers before going into the pot, and emerged with delicate yellow and brown patterns.<<< [Stations of the Sun, pp 200-202.]

Yowza! Hutton sure doesn't skimp on the geographic detail.

I'm mystified that people get a deep yellow colour from boiling the eggs with onion skins. When I've tried this, the eggs simply turn brown, and look exactly like undyed brown eggs. However, I've had excellent luck with adding two teaspoons of tumeric and 1/4 cup white vinegar to the water used to boil eggs - that DOES give a bright yellow colour. My other favourite way of naturally dyeing Easter eggs is to boil them together with finely chopped red cabbage. When the eggs are cooked, I drain them, and roll them while still hot against the cooked cabbage, which gives them a mottled mauve/blue pattern (although this will wash off, so you have to keep them dry afterwards). I've had very minimal luck using pureed parsley to impart a green dye, though. For mottled pink, I daub the still hot eggs with a mashed strawberry (this gives a shiny glaze once dry).

Love to hear others' experiences with natural egg dyes.

Cheers, Hester