A lecture at Primavera takes the peasant family seriously

In April 1922 Jean Price Mars lectured at Primavera in Port au Prince on the peasant family, taking the district of Kenscoff as his case. He had spent part of the previous November in the heights of the Sourcailles with a friend, collecting oral traditions from farming households, and he told the room plainly that his method claimed no scientific rigour. The subject was a provocation for that audience. Its members understood family as the sacrament the catechism describes, and their parish priest denounced from the pulpit the number of baptisms of children born outside marriage, four fifths of them recorded in the villages and coming from the countryside. The lecture answered by setting out what actually binds a rural household: the letter of request, the payment made to the bride’s parents, the oath sworn before the family altar, and the long common life that might much later be carried to a church for a second blessing.