Easter

is their most important feast, preceded by the Lenten Fast, when they refrain from eggs and flesh, as also on all Wednesdays and Fridays. In Lent they prefer (save on Saturdays and Sun days) to eat nothing that has lived. But in the time of Moses of Khorene (as perhaps still) the Armenians, like the neighbouring Kurds, believed in oracular trees which, when shaken (like the Moslem “tree of fate”), gave forth oracles: of these the most sacred were sycamores, elms, and cypre es. The Armenian era dates from the 9th of July 552 a.c, but the ecclesiastical year begins on the 11th of August. Their priests wear long hair, and beards, and have wives: they may even remarry—but not take widows.