The following are some weird bits of trivia that I gathered while researching that didn’t make it into the book. Too bad! How I would have liked to have a bear taking up a collection in the middle of the village square . . . 

From Peasants to Frenchmen, by Eugen Weber

• If you happened to be a crabby, peevish woman, you (or your husband) could pray to Saint Acaire for relief.
• Church bells were often rung to prevent storms.
• Some 19^th century French proverbs:

I'll do unto you and you do unto me.

Someone else's trouble is a dream.

To get his hands on the purse, a man will even marry a bear.

You'll surely have enough land to cover you one day.

Dead wife, new hat.

Don't count the eggs in a chicken's arse.

Don't fart higher than your arse.

Don't be vain like a flea under a velvet coat.

From The Jews in Modern France, edited by Frances Malino and Bernard Wasserstein:

• Around the 1840s, some believed that mortar was mixed with the blood of peasants to build castles.
• The graves of fat corpses would occasionally be guarded by their friends, to prevent them from being robbed, since some people believed that doctors—particularly Jewish doctors—were constantly on the lookout for the fat of a Christian.
• As late as the 1870s, peasants with books might be considered witches.

Notes from Des Paysans du Languedoc au XIXeme siècle, by Daniel Fabre and Jacques Lacroix:

• "Sterile" women would rub up against a giant phallic megalith, or would wear the pelt of a mother ewe on her head while her husband wore the underwear or pants of the father of many children.
• Some superstitions about pregnancy: The woman shouldn't make skeins, in case the umbilical cord wrapped itself around the neck of the infant; she shouldn't see a pig's blood flow to avoid hemorrhaging, she shouldn't throw out the water at night to avoid having her own water break too soon.
• A system for telling whether the child was a girl or a boy: the woman would let a coin slide between her breasts, and if it fell to the right, it was a prediction of a boy.
• All kinds of superstitions surrounding the umbilical cord: don't let the cat eat it, b/c he'll piss on the bed all day and night; it's useful for sores; don't let it touch water or fire—so the child won't die by either of these elements. The best thing is to bury it or put it in a coffin. The placenta was buried by the husband at the foot of a tree (often a fig), which would guarantee the growth of the child while it made use of the fertile properties of the placenta.
• Young bears, captured as cubs, were raised in stables and taken from village to village in spring. The bear would be chained around the neck and made to dance by the tamer, who dressed in a large scarf and hat and played a tambourine or recited verse in which he was glorified as a great hunter. The bear would then go around and take a collection, with the tambourine. Mothers would put their young children on the bears' shoulders to cure them of fear and of epilepsy.
• Occitan expression aver las oras, which means (I think) to menstruate (the French is avoir les heures), but French speakers in Languedoc translate it to avoir les ours—to have the bear.

 From Couiza: Une Ville, Un Canton, by Andre Marcel:

• Serenades were popular in the 1800s, and were sometimes greeted by emptying a full chamberpot on the heads of the singers.