This book is sold subject to the standard conditions of the Net Book Agreement. The paperback edition of this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold , hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

No abstract

No abstract

The purpose of this article is to show how specific aspects of the popular culture of Lorraine (eastern France) can be linked to distinctive features of the region's historical demography after the Thirty Years' War. It examines two customs associated with courtship: the dâyage, an exchange of riddle-like verses between groups of men and women at winter wakes, and the dônage, mock banns of marriage called by young men on the first Sunday of Lent. Both will be shown to have encouraged particularly high levels of geographical endogamy and premarital fertility, while the metaphors of monetary exchange that ran through both the dâyage and the dônage into the marriage service itself encouraged social homogamy. These customs served as a language in which rural Lorrainers between the seventeenth and the twentieth century could analyze and discuss their demographic strategies. The article considers the role of local elites (political before the Revolution, literary after) in fostering these customs and turning them into a badge of Lorrainer identity. ECOTYPES, FOLKLORIC AND DEMOGRAPHICReaders of this journal will undoubtedly be familiar with the use of the term "ecotype" by Scandinavian and Austrian historians of the family to describe how physical and economic environments shape demographic strategies and thus explain variations in household structure. 1 However, readers may be unfamiliar with another, older application of this biological metaphor in the field of folklore. The Swedish folklorist Carl von Sydow borrowed the term to describe distinct patterns in the distribution of taletypes and other folkloric genres. Although many of the best-known folktales had been recorded across the Eurasian landmass, the way they were told varied from region to region. For example, the story of The Princess on the Glass Mountain (tale-type 530) took its name from the Grimms' version which was typical of those told in Germany, but in Slavic language areas, the princess was imprisoned in a tower, not on a mountain. 2 Robert Darnton, building on the studies of a generation of postwar folklorists, found similar marked cultural preferences in his comparative study of folktales: "Although each story adheres to the same structure, the versions in the different traditions produce entirely different effects-comic in the Italian versions, horrific in the German, dramatic in the French, and droll in the English." 3 Darnton has been criticized

No abstract