Dear Mum! It is Easter Sunday here; at home – a feast of the greatest commemoration, here in the Protestant land – barely acknowledged. Well, I have a request to make of you, Mum, a rather funny request – that you send me a recipe for our babas, but a recipe for genuine babas, with and without saffron, with instructions on how hot the oven should be, when to put them in the oven, and so on. They have excellent sweets and cakes, but I always talk about babas, just as Jan Śniadecki once did about Parisian peaches – so the ladies wanted to see a baba, as they know that cake’s name means a woman. These days, I was at a soirée at the home of Mrs Wodzińska, about whom I am said to have written once. She absolutely wanted to have a baba on her table, but they didn’t know how to make one.
[Juliusz Słowacki, Listy do matki [Letters to Mother] (Geneva, 24 march 1834), 1959]
Greeted with a joyful Alleluia, the day dawned during the service: a beautiful spring day! Gregariously and boisterously, people left the church. ‘Chrystos woskres! Chrystos woskres!’ was heard all around; these solemn greetings mingled with the merry bustle of the common people, and jubilation, exultation and joy shone on all faces. We, too, were returning home, passing through the streets of the cottages; around each of them, a family of good-hearted peasants gathered, waiting for the blessing of their provisions. Our ladies returned home in an old-fashioned wagonette, and we made the short journey on foot, giving time for the parish priest to arrive for a similar rite. What a pleasant sight awaited us. In the first room, freshly covered with fir, there was a long table covered with the most delicious Święcone. Here, in the centre, a lamb with a red flag on its back holds in its upturned muzzle a handful of young grass as if heralding the return of spring; next to it are two fat piglets, each offering from its mouth a red egg...
Then there is the fattened turkey, which alone in the whole house did not fast during Lent; ham, the main ornament of the wealthy and commoner Easter tables; next to it, to satisfy the appetite of the gluttons, a quarter of a calf sits in a wide bowl. What to tell of goose breasts, tongues, hares, and black grouses capable of awakening the dullest appetite? At either end of the table sat two broad, squat babas, goodwives of that pantry. Ah! Without them, what would the whole Święcone mean? On their flushed faces, as on the face of a drunkard, thick red humps, and from inside a blackish, viscous oozing mass reassured the skilled eye that despite their terrible appearance, both their inside and skin were tasty. An assortment of dumplings and pies of various shapes and names filled the gaps between the platters, and all that, overgrown with a grove of green ivy, enticed the three senses: sight, taste and smell. […] Finally, the parish priest arrives; my grandpa welcomes him on the porch.
Soon, dressed in a surplice and having with him an organist with a bowl and an aspergillum, he consecrates and blesses the gifts of God, and having completed the rite, he turns with solemnity to his host and makes an excellent oration in half Latin and half Polish. O! My grandpa was full of erudition and Latin from Jesuit teaching, so he answered the parish priest’s speech, in which also today’s solemnity and respect for his pastoral dignity were combined.
That was followed by affectionate greetings, in which there was less humour and more genuine tenderness: sons and sons-in-law, daughters and daughters-in-law, with tears in their eyes, hardly speaking, kissed the hands of their father and benefactor... Then the host treated everyone in turn with a cut egg and did not leave out the smallest child; and with equal affection, he handed the plate to his children, retainers and faithful servants, who then went to the bakery and dined on a not so refined, but equally abundant święcone... Oh, God, where has all this gone? Where is all that pure and hearty merriment that one could find every day in the palaces and lowly cottages of the nobility? Where is the abundance of daily bread, which every landlord eagerly shared with a guest or the unfortunate...? Alas, where has it all gone?
[Ignacy Chodźko, Dworek mojego dziadka [My Grandfather’s Manor], 1838]