| Titre | Le partage du ferum. Un rite de chasse au sanglier | |
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| Auteur | Claudine Fabre-Vassas | |
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Revue | Etudes rurales |
| Numéro | no 87, 1982 La chasse et la cueillette aujourd'hui | |
| Rubrique / Thématique | La part des hommes |
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| Page | 377-400 | |
| Résumé anglais |
The Dividing of the Ferum, a rite in Boar Hunting
When a male boar is killed, it is immediately castrated. This custom, the existence of which is attested in the Languedoc and in Catalonia, is both ancient and general. For most hunters it is an act of primordial importance, for without it, it would not be possible to eat the boar's meat, which is subjected to the influence of the ferum or salvajum (the «savage»), a noxious substance, both an odor and a taste, whose seat is in the testicles. But this gesture, which is shared by everyone, draws distinctions among the persons who perform it. Seasoned hunters dispute its purpose and even its usefulness : they believe that the ferum is also carried by the boar's blood and urine and that it is present in most of the viscera (spleen, heart, liver, etc.). In general their explanations map out a physiology of the ferum characterized by a complex system of frontiers passing through these different organs. The testicles appear as the emblematic element of this physiology. The ferum, which is thought to render the meat inedible, is never altogether eliminated, but is redistributed according to a variety of hunting customs which are all very ancient however. To whom is it given ? To the dogs, whose ingestion of it is carefully regulated (the pack approaches the meat cautiously while the leaders are given the raw testicles), to the men, and specifially to the most experienced hunters (who continue to taste the ferum even though they have already tasted it at the time of their initiation as hunters).
Beyond the hunting group, there is yet another distribution. It too is controlled by the hunters. Extended to the household and the village, the ingestion of the ferum, which is subjected to a variety of manipulations and a complex cuisine, dilutes the noxious substance over an increasingly large circle. Through the diversity of discourses and practices, the sharing of the ferum thus appears as the social and symbolic nucleus of boar hunting upon which a virile fraternity is secretely founded and organized in a strict hierarchy. Source : Éditeur (via Persée) |
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| Article en ligne | http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/rural_0014-2182_1982_num_87_1_2899 |
