PEASANT PEOPRIETOKS 137 



bage or sorrel soup. His only drink is water. Easier, 

 exclaims tlie poet, is the lot of the hired labourer. In 

 Brittany many of the peasants live on porridge made of 

 buckwheat without milk, potatoes, rye bread, and buck- 

 wheat pancakes without butter. If they are a little better 

 off, they add milk and salt butter, and pork and cabbage 

 two or three times a week. In Berri, Marche, Limousin, 

 Auvergne, and the Cevennes, chestnuts are the staple diet 

 of the rural population converted into a sort of porridge or 

 paste and eaten hot. The fate of the peasant in his old 

 age is often cruel. So long as the old man has not signed 

 the deed of partition, he has the best seat by the fire ; no 

 morsel is too choice for him. The moment it is signed, he 

 is regarded as a burden ; he is sent out to beg with ragged 

 clothes ; the sooner he dies the better. In fact, the French 

 peasant is seldom far from the border-line of starvation ; all 

 the product is consumed on the spot ; money is scarce, and 

 famine periodical if not frequent. He is rarely well off 

 unless he has other means of support. Many peasants in 

 Belgium combine agricultural with other agricultural 

 pursuits ; many in France are agricultural labourers for 

 hire, and eke out their subsistence, as in the Alpes Mari- 

 times, by moneta forestiere ; in Herault they are day 

 labourers who till their own plots of land, or, as their patois 

 expresses it, 'fo7it Vimperaoii ' out of working hours ; in 

 Hautes-Pyrenees they hire themselves out for daily wages ; 

 in Tarn-et-Garonne the pages, as the peasants are called, work 

 in harvest times as estivandiers and solatiers ; in Auvergne 

 the ground is tilled by old men, women, and children, while 

 the able-bodied men work in large towns all the summer 

 as porters and water-carriers ; so, too, the Limousin sup- 

 plements the scanty produce of his land by wages earned 

 in summer months as a bricklayer or stonemason. Yet, on 



