Title: French Farming Meal Proverb
General Information about Proverb:
- Oral Lore: French Farming Meal Proverb
- Language: English
- Country of Origin: France
- Informant: India Cutler
- Date Collected: May 14, 2019
Informant Data:
- India Cutler was born and raised in McLean, Virginia; she is currently a sophomore at Dartmouth College and she works at the Dartmouth Organic Farm. This passion for farming started when she decided to go on a farming trip across Europe in the summer of 2018. During this trip she farmed in France and Germany most notably the towns of Le Pompidou and Corsica(Ole Rousse). Here she subsistence farmed with a number of host families where she learned how to farm as well as common farming practices and folklore.
Contextual Data:
Social Context
India stated that she heard this proverb when initially meeting her first host family in Le Pompidou. She stated that this proverb is something that has been passed down from generation to generation in the farm and is also told to each farmer that comes and works for them. She said it is almost a rite of passage to be able to work on the farm because the specific eating structure allows them to work efficiently in the farm. In the morning they need a large meal before working on the fields, then for lunch they need an even bigger meal because no only have they been working for hours but they also need to refuel for the next work session at the farm. For dinner they eat a small snack like meal to hold them over for the morning. She explained how they truly utilized their calories for work and didn’t simply eat for fun or just because they were hungry; there was always a purpose and reason for most of what they did on the farm.
Cultural Context
It is quite difficult to understand the cultural implications of this proverb when taken out of a utilitarian context and equally difficult to trace this to a certain cultural phenomena tied to the chronology and portion of meals in French farming folklore. What I have found interesting is that this proverb is not a unique one and is often now cited in scientific articles and a similar eating structure is even called to “Eat Like an Egyptian” by History.com. It is interesting to investigate whether this proverb spread through monogenesis like a language, diffusion like migration of cultural traits, or polygenesis a form of convergent validity.
Item:
“Eat like a king in the morning, like an emperor for lunch, and like a peasant in the evening”
Collector’s Name: Aaron Flores