Forefathers’ Eve is a celebration performed among plebs in many parts of Lithuania, Prussia and Courland, memorialising forefathers – the dead ancestors. This festivity goes back to the pagan times, and was once called the feast of a goat, led by a shaman – a priest and a poet in one.

Today, since the enlightened priesthood and landowners strove to put an end to the pagan practices, the plebs celebrate Forefathers’ Eve in secret in chapels or abandoned houses in the area of cemeteries. A feast composed of choice meals and beverages is prepared, and the souls of the dead are called. Interestingly, the custom of offering food to the dead seems to be common to all the pagan people in ancient Greece, in the Homeric times, in Scandinavia, in the East, and till now on the islands of the New World. Our Forefathers’ Eve is peculiar in that the pagan rites became mixed with the image of Christian religion, especially that the day of All Souls is celebrated together with the festivities. The plebs believes that with food and drink they bring relief to the souls in Purgatory.

Adam Mickiewicz, Forefathers' Eve, 1823-32

Forefathers’ Eve and Halloween have exactly the same roots, but what in other countries was shunned for paganism, survived in multi-ethnic and multi-religious Poland almost unchanged. If you ever wondered why you give the sweets to the kids on Halloween, you have the answer now. Forefathers’ Eve is still celebrated in today’s Belarus. In today’s Poland we have only the All Souls day.

The story takes place in England and Poland in 1812, and all the facts about real people and events are historically correct. Poland didn’t actually exist then, being partitioned by Prussia, Russia and Austria, and partly recovered by Napoleon, however, the term Poland was still applied to what the country was before the occupation. Poland (earlier Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) consisted of two major provinces – the Crown and Lithuania. Both terms have little to do with the shape of the countries today. The place Darcy first arrives at was in the Crown, and the one he eventually goes to is actually in today’s Belarus, and when I use the term Poles, I do not mean Poles as the people to whom the word is applied today, but all the ethnicities to whom the word was applied in the beginning of the 19th century. If you’re completely lost, here's a map of the old and today’s borders put together. However, you do not need to know that to read the story.

Sylwia

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