Literal translation
The life of the rats.
Meaning
eternal life
Explanation
This formula serves as a playful equivalent to the Latin phrase vitam aeternam, eternal life, invoked in Christian prayer. The shift toward the rat is a piece of popular, facetious wordplay, unconnected to any real belief about the animal's longevity: the gàrri, the rat, has no particular reputation for long life in Provençal culture, which makes the substitution deliberately absurd and comic. It can be seen as a common device in popular speech, which twists a solemn, often religious or Latin formula by inserting a familiar, incongruous word to defuse its gravity. The expression is said in a playful register, generally as an ironic echo to some mention of eternity, paradise, or a wait that seems as if it will never end. It belongs to the common stock of Provençal linguistic jokes that like to play with set liturgical phrases, without deep irreverence, rather in a spirit of shared complicity and light mockery.