The famous moving statues, whose eccentric oscillations appear to be unique to this island, have their counterpart in the folklore of other countries, where it is believed - or at least was believed in bygone times - that the sun dances on an Easter Sunday morning.
One John Evans, for example, writing in the 17th century, recalls how he "went up a hill to see the Easter sun appear, and saw it rise, skip, play, dance and turn about like a whale". Likewise, the English poet John Suckling, writing around about the same time, alludes to the phenomenon while contemplating the terpsichorean perfection of his paramour:
But oh, she dances such a way;
No sun upon an Easter day
Is half so fine a sight.
Meteorologists would argue that both Johns were under an illusion, at least in the context of the dancing of the Easter sun.
It all goes back to the nature of the feast itself. According to the Venerable Bede, whose pronouncements on these topics are rarely challenged, Easter is named after Eostre, the pagan goddess of the dawn.
A sacrifice was made to Eostre around the vernal equinox - an event which still governs the date of the celebration of the feast - the object being to ensure a good harvest for the coming season. Indeed, the remains of this custom are to be found in the common belief that the meteorological character of Easter Sunday governs the pattern of the weather for the summer that will soon begin.
It also, no doubt, lies behind the superstition that, if it rains on Low Sunday, the Sunday after Easter, then there will be rain on every Sunday until Pentecost.
In any event, long after sacrifices to Eostre were abandoned, it remained the custom to rise early on an Easter morning to observe the dawn, and, as in the case of the moving statues, people concentrating on the rising sun imagined things which they did not really see.
When the sun is low in the sky, its rays must travel a long distance through the Earth's atmosphere to reach an observer, and refraction or "bending" of the light beams sometimes results in strange optical effects.
Under certain atmospheric conditions the sun may assume strange shapes: it may resemble a loaf of bread, a mushroom, or a fish - or even appear to be divided into two or more parts. These optical changes sometimes follow one another in quick succession; and, with the help of a little bit of imagination, it was not difficult for our ancestors to believe that the Easter sun was indeed dancing on the horizon.