Love Riddles, Couple Formation, and Local Identity in Eastern France

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

A Life History of the ‘Irish’ Ecotype Tied Stones and Loose Dogs

“…Inspired by the work of Hasan-Rokem (2000; and Hopkin (2003; in re-evaluating von Sydow's (1932) concept of the ecotype, this study has shown that folk idioms or expressions are a fertile area of research that can be deconstructed using exhaustive literary and historical research based on the historic-geographic method. At the heart of this template, I would contend, is the need to read texts within their contemporary cultural, historical and socio-economic frameworks to decode meanings according to instantiation, the motivations for their use, and the question of agency in folk groups.…”

“…At the heart of their argument was the claim that there is little difference between ecotypes and local sub-forms, although this largely ignores the influence of socio-cultural contexts or what von Sydow has termed "prevailing tastes." 8 Nevertheless in spite of such academic discord, a wide range of scholars have readily invoked the concept to deconstruct a range of folkloristic genres including rhyming couplets (Hopkin 2003), folksongs and folk ballads (Bošković-Stulli 1966;Cunningham 1976;Narváez 2002), folktales (Dundes 1962;Roberts 1966;Dégh 1972;Ballard 1983), fairy-tales (Dégh 1961), Wellerisms (Järviö-Nieminen 1959), personal narratives (Kalc̆ik 1975), legends (Ellis 1983) and 'urban legends' 9 (Brunvand 1974;Fine 1987;1992;Goldstein 1996;Ashton 2001). 10 In recent years, Galit Hasan-Rokem's (2000; innovative use of ecotypes to elicit 'the orality in the written' (Hasan-Rokem 2003: 2) in rabbinic literature has opened new perspectives on the interface of class, gender, culture, religion and ethnicity in Late Antiquity.…”

“…10 In recent years, Galit Hasan-Rokem's (2000; innovative use of ecotypes to elicit 'the orality in the written' (Hasan-Rokem 2003: 2) in rabbinic literature has opened new perspectives on the interface of class, gender, culture, religion and ethnicity in Late Antiquity. Whilst there has also been a re-engagement with ecotypes in interdisciplinary studies, particularly in the social sciences (for example, Wolf 1966;Löfgren 1976;Hopkin 2003;. Scholars such as David Hopkin (2016: 31, 36) have argued for using ecotypes as a means of bridging gaps between social history and cultural history, as ecotypes reveal not only the cultural preferences of the group but also connect those preferences to particular experiences.…”