A French Affair by Mary Blume

Author:Mary Blume
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Free Press
Published: 1999-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

LETTING LOOSE AND HOLDING DOWN

PARIS— In the nineteenth century, folk traditions began to be recorded and studied by local notables—teachers, lawyers, notaries—with plenty of time and foolscap at hand. Today, France’s rich folklore is a burgeoning subsection of ethnology and holidays that used to offer a larky respite from hard peasant life are being scrutinized for their political and economic ramifications.

Georges Duby’s preface to Fêtes en France (published by Editions du Chêne) is an example of the new approach. Were the traditional holidays a pretext for merrymaking, pagan jollities connected to farming life? No: they were used by the Establishment to keep the peasants in order. “Purified by the tumult, people return to their places, to calm, order and habit,” Mr. Duby writes. No wonder, he says, that local holidays were especially encouraged during the nineteenth century, when country folk became repressed, second-class citizens.

Folk traditions also have an economic side, Mr. Duby says: “Today’s world treats ancient holidays as consumer objects.” This, of course, has always been true in the literal sense: French fetes seem inevitably to be connected with the consumption of food and drink. One Mardi Gras fete in the Pyrenees, La Fête à l’Ours, positively requires that participants be well oiled before the fun begins.

Easter being the most radiant and hopeful of holidays, it is also, after Lenten sacrifices, a superb time for eating. As Robert de Sorbon, confessor of St. Louis and founder of the Sorbonne in 1253, put it: “Today, the sermon will be short but the table long. One must celebrate the end of Lent.”

“Families awaited the great day with agitation, and housewives would bustle around preparing the dishes,” G. Bidault de I’Isle, a genial collector of folklore of the old school, has written.

Sometimes they couldn’t wait. A collective vision of a huge cake and bottles of wine once interrupted an Easter sermon in the Yonne, and in Semur a table loaded with wine bottles would be set up in the nave as a sign of the joys that would follow Communion.

In parts of Burgundy the traditional Easter dish was ham, especially jambon persillé. Lamb was preferred in the Vendée, while the Jura and Poitou celebrated with game pâté. The north, fed up with eating salted fish all through Lent, welcomed Easter as “saltless Sunday” and celebrated by eating fresh meat all day long. In Alsace, engaged couples would share a pretzel as a pledge of eternal love.

In many parts of France bacon omelette was a traditional Easter dish. Eggs laid on Good Friday were kept as long as possible because their virtues would ward off illness (in the Côte d’Or lentils eaten on Good Friday erased one’s sins).

According to tradition, one was not to work on Good Friday, and on that day ships flew their flags at half mast. However, if one put out one’s flea-ridden sheets before dawn on Good Friday, the fleas would flee. Or better still, and more typically French, if you leave your dishcloth in the sink during Holy Week, the fleas will jump over to your neighbor’s house.

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