Locusts.

(For food.)

“The bushmen [says Captain Stockenston] consider locusts a great luxury, consuming great quantities fresh, and drying abundance for future emergencies.” “They are eaten [says Thomas Bayne] in like manner by the Arabs of the Desert, and by other nomadic tribes in the East.”

“Even the wasting locust-swarm,

Which mighty nations dread,

To me no terror brings, nor harm,

I make of them my bread.”

African Sketches (1820).

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.