What is the origin of the term “bringing home the bacon?” I recently read about an ancient European Holiday called Flitch Day and wondered if there is a link between the two.
Thanks,
Baconcerned
Are you referring to the Dunmow Flitch, which is awarded on a specific day once every four years? Although this is a very old custom, it is also very localized, and you win the bacon for being able to prove you are a happily married couple.
“Bringing home the bacon” surely refers to being paid for some sort of work, and is usually applied to one or other member of a couple, traditionally to differentiate the contribution of the husband, who works outside the home and “brings home the bacon” while the wife stays at home and does her work there. That is a completely different situation from the Dunmow Flitch, which is awarded to a couple as a couple, so no, I doubt that there is any connection.
From der Wiki:
“Bringing home the bacon” was historically a reference to the winner of a marital fidelity contest who was awarded a “flitch” (side) of “bacon” (pork). The tradition originated in a 12th-century custom linked to the town of Great Dunmow, England.
So, yes, there’s a definite connection.
Also from the English Breakfast Society website:
Bringing Home The Bacon
You have probably heard the phrase “bring home the bacon” and assumed it had something to do with bringing home money, when in actual fact it was first said in 12th century england in the spirit of matrimonial harmony.
A church in the English town of Dunmow, Essex promised a flitch (side) of bacon to any married man who could swear before the congregation and God that he had not quarreled with his wife for a year and a day. A husband who could bring home the bacon was held in high esteem by the community for his forbearance, self-control, patience and ability to serve an English breakfast.
What was then the town of Dunmow, became the town of Great Dunmow which still holds The Dunmow Flitch Trials every 4 years and awards a flitch of bacon (a salted and cured side) to married couples if they can satisfy the Judge and Jury of 6 maidens and 6 bachelors that in twelve months and a day they have not wished themselves unmarried again.
The phrase bring home the bacon later evolved into meaning generate household income, but sometimes the person saying it may have actually said it literally, historically the European peasant diet included bacon as it was a relatively inexpensive kind of meat compared to other cuts.
Welcome to the boards. I love your user name. That is all.
An assertion in Wikipedia does not a “definite connection” make.
The passage you quote from the authoritative sounding “English Breakfast Society website” sounds to me like a folk etymology that was made up by someone who made the same association and speculation that the OP did. No evidence is provided of any actual connection between the Dunmow Flitch competition and the modern expression, which actually refers to something quite different from what occurs on Flitch day in Dunmow (as I pointed out, and as your cite acknowledges, with a handwave to the meaning having “later evolved”). For the reasons given in my previous post, I think it is most unlikely to be the real origin. For one thing, over the ages, the times that people brought the Dunmow flitch to their homes represent a vanishingly small proportion of the times people quite literally brought bacon to their homes.
It is much more likely that the expression originated from references to someone in a family actually going and bringing home bacon from the market, or, as it is used now, bringing home money which the family anticipates spending on bacon or other goodies. Bacon just represents good stuff here, and as your cite acknowledges, bacon was one of the commonest forms of good stuff available to European peasants, so it is not surprising that they might use it as a symbol of good stuff in general.
The Dunmow Flitch competition is a nice, quaint folk tradition that happens to involve bacon, but there is no law that says that common linguistic expressions have to be connected with quaint folk traditions, especially when the metaphorical meaning of the expression is not very far away from its literal meaning, and is quite far from anything that the folk tradition involves. This applies even more strongly when the quaint folk tradition is confined to a single country village. Before the era of mass media, very few people, indeed, very few of the people who actually, regularly brought home bacon, even just in Essex, would ever have heard of the Dunmow flitch. Indeed, very few people have heard of it now, even in Essex (I say this as an Essex native, writing from Essex). By contrast, almost every English speaker in the world understands what “bring home the bacon” means.
Okay, fair enough.
This site points out the frequent alluding to the phrase to the flitch trials in Great Dunmow, and the possible connection through Chaucer, BUT then goes on to give us how it came to be in the modern vocabulary:
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