Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 236, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 October 1910 — Life or the Swiss Peasant [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Life or the Swiss Peasant

SWITZERLAND never grows old or pale. It never wearies its lovers and admirers. It is always beautiful. Surely its people have found the fountain of perpetual youth, for nothing stales its Infinite variety. It is the country of seasonal and perennial attractions, possessing that rare thing that even vandal men cannot destroy. The peasants love their home and in many instances preserve the delightfully quaint customs which so greatly charm the tourist. One would be mistaken to judge these people as ignorant; the constitution of the country enables them to obtain an insight into general state affairs and great care is taken in the education of the young to broaden their knowledge in every direction. Their intelligence, therefore, strikes the visitor as remarkable.

During the summer one is not troubled with snow until one reaches about eight thousand feet altitude. In the winter snow is, however, as low as 2,000 or even 1,000 feet. The white line thus moves high or low according to the season. The pageantry of the season indeed is nowhere else so crowded with delightful surprises in which the people, move in sympathy. The peasants are true to the nature that has mothered them. In the spring the villages are agog and abustle, holding picturesque old-time festivals, preceding the start of the herds to the mountain pastures. The matrons of the herds are provided with melodious bells, globular in form, but thin and light and differing In size from twelve to two inches in diameter. They are as varied in pitch as in size, and their tones mellow into a gentle, harmonious effect without harshness. The herders and the dairy maids meet on the village green to enjoy a day of song and dance. Preparations are made for the summer’s round of activity in the mountains, where, in spite of hard work, an almost idyllic experience is lived by the light-heart-ed peasants. 'The verdant and aromatic pastures, amid these wonderful scenic settings, provide vistas opening on wide horizons of jagged peaks and profound gorges clothed with the rarest verdure. The mountain herdsmen and their comely companions of the churn are hardy and blooming, and song and yodeling continually ease and relieve the labors of the summer when duties are arduous and results imperative. It is a unique and inspiring sight to witness the annual spring parade or procession starting for the mountain pastures. The usual cooking and dairy utensils have to be transported, for these migrants from the vales must remain with their charges in the mountains until the time of return in the fall of the year. They occupy their mountain huts, which are fitted suitably for themselves as well as for the necessary dairying. As soon as the snow begins to disappear from the lower pastures the herder marshals his herd and starts out. In the festive procession the bull leads. On his horns are placed a milk stool, and on his head a chaplet of flowers. He bears, hanging from his neck, the deep-toned bell. These melodious bells are made of alloyed silver. From their tones have originated the imitative yodeling or warbling of the herder—a sudden changing from the falsetto to the chest voice, and vice versa. Following the monarch of the herd comies the queen of the kine, gayly decorated and wearing the best bell of the cows. Every cow has her bell, and so accustomed are they to them that losing them is a disaster, even causing a loss of the “cud.” The Kine know their places.- At the start the strongest and best assert their precedence. They will battle among themselves for the right of way, which, once settled, all is peace. The bell-cow leads in the search for pastures new and she brooks no interference. The mountaineer’s response to the sound of the herder’s Jtfyous yodel is the "alpenhorn,” a long horn, the effect of which must be heard in the Alps to be appreciated. The mountains echo it with infinite sweetness, and the effect is tender and thrilling. The farther the distance from which its tones are heard the more flute-like seems its answer —powerful, mellow. Strong and sweet, it fills the valley, while the echoes are flung weirdly and strangely from the mountain ramparts. In the former times, when the sturdy Schweitzer often had to leave his herds and repel an intruding fdrce, the alpenhorn was the n>?ans of Sum-

moning him to arms. Even now the melody has a haunting sound that seems to speak of martial deeds. “No wonder the sound of the alpenhorn was forbidden during the days when the Swiss served as mercenaries to France and Italy and other countries,” says a writer. "Its sound would cause hundreds of otherwise faithful soldiers to desert for their Alps. And the songs with which Alpine herders call their companions from hill to hill and from crag to crag are of the same nature.” There is a very practical relationship between good singing and good dairying, and this was proved at a farmers' congress at Interlaken, where in a milking contest three days long, the same cows, milked in songless silence, yielded 200 quarts of milk; milked by maids with fair voices, they yielded 220 quarts; milked by maids with the finest voices they yielded 240 quarts. This proof of a fact that had long been suspected at once set a premium on the milkmaids who could sing well. They that coijld not sing well began immediately to study vocalization, and hence Switzerland has many good singing milkmaids. Milking time in the mountain is easily known by the tourist on account of the enormous volume of song that then soars up. Client milking is a crime, and the dairymaid who milks In silence Is certain to lose her position. Swiss maids who apply for places in dairies are examined as strictly in singing as in milking and butter-making. But dairying is only one of the Swiss peasants’ occupations. All over the sides of the mountains are seen the pretty chalets, with their patches of cultivated ground, and every peasant seems to own some land, even though it may be not more than a few square feet, but it is divided off into little plats for the different vegetables like pieces in a crazy quilt. In the valleys are the orchards and pasture land. The mountain farms are steep and rocky and cannot be plowed, „ but are dug up with spades and hoes by women and girls. The women also occasionally cut the grass on the almost perpendicular mountain slopes, bind it into bundles and carry it to the barns on their -backs.

There is scarcely anything so picturesque as a Swiss haymaker with curiously pointed hat. his loose blouse of dark hue and his knee breeches, as he moves about with his rake qver his shoulder. That self-same swain swinging his broad-blamed, straighthandled scythe, while with a swishswash he mows the grass laid before him, makes another graceful figure. The round, rosy cheeks and the simple costume of basque, full short skirt and bright head-dress of the buxom maidens who rake after him render the picture complete. The costumes of these still idyllic peasants are as picturesque as nature. The Bernese peasant girl's coßtume ia beautiful, with its snow-white shirtsleeves rolled up to the shoulder, exposing to view a plump, sunburnt arm. The life of the people, active and intensely human, is filled up with many festive occasions, full of ceremonial traditions. In these they exhibit their national customs and costumes, and the most interesting of them concern affairs nearest the heart. Betrothal, marriage, christening, as well as the many folk affairs, furnish occasiona in which the festive dance is gleefully indulged in. Many a hard day’s work is ended by such a festive gathering, and then it is that the soul of the peasant is wrought forth in his timely acts. * ’ \