Swiss Peasant Home and Life in 1891, Part 1
The industry, thrift, helpfulness, and simple contentment of the Swiss peasants, next to the natural scenery, attract our attention. One must respect their laborious industry, frugality, and perseverance, and regret…
From: 1891 C.E. To: 1891 C.E.
From The Swiss Republic by Boyd Winchester, 1891.
"Mid the murmurings of his fountains,
And the echoes of his mountains,
"Where the lordly eagle soars,
"Where the headlong torrent roars.
He is, as he was meant to be,
Poor and virtuous, calm and free."
The industry, thrift, helpfulness, and simple contentment of the Swiss peasants, next to the natural scenery, attract our attention. One must respect their laborious industry, frugality, and perseverance, and regret that so much toil, with such close and unfailing economy, should have such meagre results. Dwelling among the crags and clouds, their flats mostly water and their slopes mostly ice, they get out of their little holdings every farthing that they will yield, and squander nothing. There is a kind of manliness in their never-ending struggle against the niggardliness and severity of nature; out-braving and beating its hard opposition. Sharp-pressing need spurs them to wring a difficult and scant subsistence from the mountain-steeps. Secluded and poor, yet brave and cheerful, they recall the lines from the description of the old Corycian peasant:
"And wisely deem'd the wealth of monarchs less
Than little of his own, because his own did please."
Every little scrap of ground is turned to the best account. If a few square yards can anywhere be made or reclaimed the requisite labor is not grudged. Many of these sturdy people compel an incredibly little spot of ground to yield them enough, and some to spare. This surprising product from a soil, much of it very poor, is due to the perfection of spade-work; each field, or rather patch, has the perfection of shape given to it to facilitate cultivation and drainage. This small cultivator, only with spade in hand, can fertilize the waste and perform prodigies which nothing but his love of the land could enable him to accomplish. These peasants have a proverb that "if the plough has a ploughshare of iron, the spade has a point of gold.”
In the mountainous districts the land is reclaimed by this petite culture. In fact, the man makes the very soil. He builds terraces along steep inclines, lining them with blocks of stone, and then packs the earth to them, transforming the mountain and the rock into a little patch where he plants a vine or raises a little oats or maize. Up the heights of rocks which even goats cannot climb, on the very brow of the abyss, the peasant goes, clinging to the precipice with iron crampers on his feet in search of grass. He hangs on the sides of the rocks which imprison the valley and mows down a few tufts of grass from craggy shelves. The hay thus gathered is called wildheu, and the reaper wildheuer. This peasant mountain-mower is essentially sui generis. He is accustomed to all the perils of the mountain, and the day before the mowing season begins—a day fixed by communal decree—he bids farewell, perhaps for the last time, to his wife and children.
His scythe on his shoulder, armed with his iron-shod stick, provided with his clamp-irons, a cloth or a net rolled up in his bag, he sets out at midnight, in order that the dawn may find him at his work. During the two months of hay-harvest he only goes down to the village three or four times to renew his supply of food or linen. By this hard and perilous occupation an Alpine mower makes from three to five francs a day, his food not included; and many times under some projecting rock he must seek a bed and pass the night. Once dried, this wild hay is carefully gathered into a cloth or net and carried down to the first little plain, where it can be made into a stack, which is loaded with large stones to prevent it being blown away. In winter, when everything is covered with snow, the mower climbs again the perpendicular sides of the mountain, carrying his little wooden sledge on his shoulders. He loads it with hay, seats himself on the front, and shoots down with the swiftness of an arrow. At times, the snow softened by the warm wind which blows upon the heights, is detached in an avalanche behind him, and swallows him up before he reaches the valley.
This aromatic hay, composed of the nourishing flora of the high Alps, of delicate and succulent plants, of the wild chrysanthemum, the dwarf carline thistle, the red-flowered veronica, the Alpine milfoil with its black calyx, the clover with its great tufts, and the meum, an umbelliferous plant, gives a delicious milk, and is greatly sought after for the fattening of cattle. In these steep solitudes where the grass is found, the life of man is so exposed and accidents are so fre- quent that the law forbids there should be more than one mower in a family. With him it is a fight for life, not infrequently conducted to the death. At all times great charges of wrath hang over him,—a beetling crag, a stream of stones, a cataract of ice, a moving field of snow, the flash that rends his roof, the wind that strips his trees, the flood that drowns his land, against each of these messengers of ill he must hold a separate watch, and must learn to brave each danger when it comes, alike by flush of noon and in the dead of night. The little valley below lies at the mercy of these ice- and storm-engendering heights. Year by year the peasants fight against its being extorted from their dominion. Yet this feeble community in the valley, by their stout hearts and virtuous lives, continue to make it smile on the frowning mountains:
"Durum! sed levius fit patientia
Quicquid corrigere est nefas."
It is a strange and savage reverence which the peasants feel for the mountains. They seem to grow like each other in spirits, even as a man and wife who live in peace grow like each other year by year. With no people is the love of home and the native soil so strongly developed. To return to his village in the midst of his beloved mountains is the constant dream of his life, and to realize it he will endure every privation and bind himself to the hardest and most painful toil. One hope possesses him,—to see again the snows, the glaciers, the lakes, the great oaks, and the familiar pines of his country. It is a sentiment so human—of home, of kindred, of the accustomed locality, of country—that has fostered itself on him and binds him to the spot with a chain he has no power to break. The Almighty himself has implanted in the human breast that passionate love of country which rivets with irresistible attraction the Esquimau to his eternal snows, the Arab to his sandy desert, and the Swiss to his rugged mountains:
"Cling to thy home: if there the meanest shed
Yield thee a hearth and shelter for thy head,
And some poor plot, with vegetables stored,
Be all that Heaven allots thee for thy board,
Unsavory bread and herbs that scatter'd grow
Wild on the river-bank or mountain brow,
Yet e'en this cheerless mansion shall provide
More heart's repose than all the world beside."
There is a quietness and a sombre severity in the lives of these peasants. In spite of occasional merry-making, pleasure-seeking is rare. They have no great sensibility or expression of joy, but a composed satisfaction, a kind of phlegmatic good humor, marks the boundary of their happiness. Many visitors to the country are disposed to complain of the plainness of their demeanor; that their speech is rough and their style hard. The simple abruptness of the peasant's greeting is not without its charms. How far one feels from the obsequious manners of the city, from profuse and insincere compliments! Is there not to some extent in all this a philosophical basis? In general, is it not true that the members of a republic, conscious of their independence and self-importance, adhere less scrupulously to the conventional regularity of forms? Again, the extreme politeness which sometimes characterizes the subject of an arbitrary government may be the result of that policy which introduces and encourages an exterior air of civility as the mark of subordination and respect.
The Swiss peasants have neither the time, disposition, nor necessity to affect these elegant improvements,—fopperies of a trifling and superficial elegance which frequently serve merely to soften the deformities of vice. They are delightfully natural human beings, human nature simple and unabashed, and manifest a courteous consideration for each other's comforts and sensibilities. They have no occasion to assert offensively that equality of right which nobody denies, and they respect each other's rights as thev do their own. There are no castes to clash, no lower class to assert itself in rudeness, and no higher class to provoke rudeness by insolent assumption. They maintain old-fashioned habits of courteous hospitality, and the workmen in the field will shout out to the passer-by a kindly guten tag or guten abend, with the a prolonged bevond the amen of a chant, and the children invariably take off their caps or drop a courtesy. Even the pastoral beggars present a species of attractive mendicity, as the little children come out to meet you with offerings of Alpine roses, cherries on their branches, and strawberries in the leaves, extending their hands, with the common entreaty—bitte, bitte (pray do).
We hear a great deal of the peasant's chalet. Though very picturesque in appearance, as they glisten in the sunbeams on the slopes or dot the pastoral valleys, these chalets are by no means such charming dwellings as often pictured. Owing to the original abundance of timber, it was almost the only material employed in the building of these houses. There are practically three styles: the so-called block-house, in which the logs are laid one upon the other, notched at the ends so as to fit into each other at the angles where they cross; the post-built house, in which upright posts and a strong frame-work are filled in with planks; and the riegelhaus, with brick or stone.
All soon become dark-brown of hue, and are quaint and distinctive in form. They are covered with low flat roofs of shingles, weighted with stones to prevent them from being carried away by the wind; the roofs overhang the walls like the brim of a hat, widened to protect the face from the rain, and are frequently shaped and sculptured by the knife with curious and patient skill. There is a peculiarly sheltered look in the broad projection of the thatched roofs, which, with the thick covering of moss, and their visible beams, making all kinds of triangles upon the ancient plaster of the walls, are very odd and attractive things. The low panelled rooms are innocent of gilding and of painting, but are cleanliness itself.
Hollow niches over the doors contain statues of the Virgin, heroes, or saints. The plain benches, tables, cupboards., and chairs are made of the whitest wood, and are so scoured, washed, and polished that to paint or varnish them would be to defile them. Most articles of furniture are quaintly shaped and ornamented, old looking, but rubbed bright and in good preservation, from the nut-cracker, curiously carved, to the double-necked cruet, pouring oil and vinegar out of the same bottle. They are heated with porcelain stoves, cylindrical in shape, two and a half to three feet in diameter, reaching from the floor almost to the ceiling, and bound with bright brass rings to give them strength. These stoves are built of white enamelled tile, which is two or three inches in thickness, and the blocks of tile are put in layers, the inside of the stove being lined with heavy fire-brick, leaving the flue not more than ten inches in diameter. From this wall of fire-brick run a series of small valves up and down and around, carrying the hot air to a number of caps at the top and bottom of the stove, and thence into the room.
Wood or turf is used, and it is astonishing how little fuel is necessary. A fire is started in the morning, the damper remains open until the gases have all passed up the chimney, and only the smouldering ashes remain, then the damper is closed, and no more fuel is needed for twelve hours; if, before retiring, the process of the morning be repeated, it will remain warm through the entire night. The stoves are not unsightly, but in many instances ornamental, having a clean and well-polished surface, with doors and caps of brass highly burnished. In the centre of the stove is a receptacle for warming dishes or keeping a supply of hot water. The stoves are placed close up in the corner, or form part of the partition between rooms so as to be out of the way and heat two rooms.
To some cottages there is an outside stair leading to the second story, or even to the third, if there be one, for these houses are frequently the property of several owners. The peasant who, in the Valais, possesses the third part of a mule and the fourth part of a cow, has often only the half or third of a house. The Jura cottage has no daintiness of garden nor wealth of farm about it,—it is indeed little more than a delicately-built chalet, yet trim and domestic, mildly intelligent of things other than pastoral, watch-making and the like; though set in the midst of its meadows, the gentian at its door, the lily of the valley wild in the copses hard by. My delight in these cottages, and in the sense of human industry and enjoyment through the whole scene, Avas at the root of all pleasure in its beauty."
Within and without these chalets are mural inscriptions and symbols:
"Quarter 'd o'er with scutcheons of all hues,
And proverbs sage, which passing travellers
Linger to read, and ponder o'er their meaning."
They are put upon the beam, upon panels, carved in the cornices everywhere to catch the eye. They are most various in character, friendly welcomes, praises of their native land, exhortations to unity, to freedom, and to courage. On the great projecting beam supporting the roof, called sablière, are often painted, amid ornaments and flowers, the initials J. M. J. (Jesus, Mary, and Joseph), as well as the name of the man for whom the house was made, and that of the master carpenter who built it. Those of the Bernese Oberland have inscriptions reminding man of his duty and the solemnity of life; of which the following are samples :
'The friends from whom we needs must part
'Twill pleasure give to meet again."
" 'Gainst malice, lies, hypocrisy.
Closed may this house forever be."
"My God, my strength, whom I will trust,
A buckler unto me ;
The horn of my salvation
And my high tower is He."
"On account of one day, be afraid of all days."
Many of the inscriptions are from the Bible, and thus not only the churches, but public buildings and private houses teach morality. In the Grisons you see on many the arms of the three leagues engraved; one will bear a cross, another a wild goat, a third a man on horseback, and above them the lines carved, —
“These are the arms of the Grisons,
On the mountains their strongholds lie;
God will have the graciousness
To preserve their liberty."
This inscription is on a church-bell, dating back four centuries: "Vivos voco, mortuos plango, fulgura frango" ("I call the living, I mourn the dead, I break the lightning").
The stone chalets in Ticino have their fronts painted pink, and decorated in Italian fashion, with garlands of flowers and symbolical vases, pouring out wine and milk. The finest of these houses are not ducal palaces, the poorest are never hovels. A real Swiss cottage is as much adapted to Swiss scenery as the Gothic is suited to the holy and sublime feelings of devotion; there is a fitness in the subdued color of the resin from the larch to an association which requires extreme simplicity; the same cottage painted white would be found offensive and obtruding.
Near by is the barn, a wooden bridge thrown over the entrance, with a long and gradual ascent, that conducts the wagons loaded with hay to the loft. Some of these are as generous in size and as well built and equipped as the best Pennsylvania barns. It may be that the dwelling, barn, and dairy are all under one roof; but if so, they are separated with a scrupulous regard to neatness. All wastes are corded and covered up outside like so many piles of treasure, to renew the soil when summer comes round. This fumier is the special pride of the peasant, and is frequently an imposing object, arranged in layers, with the straw rolled and platted at the sides; it stands proudly by the roadside and often the ornament of the front yard. Everything is in its place; order reigns by virtue of some natural law.
There is a kind of Robinson Crusoe industry about their houses and their little properties ; they are perpetually building, repairing, altering, or improving something. Thought and care are day by day bestowed on every bit of ground to secure a sufficiency of the things that will be needed in the long winter. Every plant is treated by itself as though it was a child; every branch pruned, every bed watered, every gourd trained. From hour to hour the changes in the heavens are observed and what they import considered; for they may import a great deal ; the time allowed for bringing the little crops to maturity is so short that the loss of sunshine for a few days may cause anxious thought. It is a sight which awakens reflection and touches the heart. There is much of healthy purity prevailing around these cottage homes.
Every one, according to his means, endeavors to make the homestead an ornament to the grassy and elm-shadowed way-side. The green rock-strewn turf comes up to the door, and the bench is along the wall outside. Flowers surround and adorn the windows, the luscious clusters of the vine ripen above the porch, and the little violet creeps over the stone steps or hangs in a sunny niche, its flowers gleaming remotely. Nothing can be more charming than the large carnations which often brighten the dark larch or pinewood chalets, with their glossy red blossoms hanging from the windows and balconies. The pleasant vine-sheltered door seems to hospitably invite the imagination of the passer-by into the sweet domestic interior of this cottage life. And there is about the inner life of these humble homes a something one may almost say of sanctity, which is not so apparent, at all events on the surface of things, in splendid mansions. Their splendor is transmuted money, there is no poetry in it; if hearts are moved by it, it is not in that fashion or to that issue that it touches them.
Quite different with these quiet and secluded homes. There every object has a pleasing history. There industry has accumulated its fruits, frugality its comforts, and virtue diffused its contentment. The care that is taken of it tells you how hard it had been to come by. You read in it a little tale of the labor, the self-denial expended on its acquisition; it is a revelation of an inner life which you are the better for contemplating and for sympathizing with. Shut off from the world, untainted by luxury, unstained by avarice mid lonely toil, practising the simple forms of life and faith, maintaining bravely and contentedly a hard struggle in their Alpine glens, these peasants are on better terms with life than many people who are regarded to have made a better bargain. " To watch the corn grow or the blossoms set, to draw hard breath on the ploughshare or spade," have attractions for them, not accounted for in the meagre train of advantages and comforts they bring, and must be sought in the inspiration of the poet, —
''Happy the man whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound;
Content to breathe his native air
On his own ground.
"Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire ;
Whose trees in summer yield him shade.
In winter fire."
Often the cottage is perched on a mountain crag, and the peasant must be sleepless and prompt, for he lies down with danger at his door and must rise to meet it when the moment comes. There is a continual menace of desolation and ruin:
"No zephyr fondly soothes the mountain's breast,
But meteors glare and stormy glooms invest."
At dusk you see a cottage on a shelf of rock, a hut in which the shepherd churns his milk, a bit of soil in which he grows his herbs, a patch of grass on which his heifers browse, a simple cross at which his children pray. At dead of night a tremor passes through the mountain-side, a slip of earth takes place, or a " thunderbolt of snow" which no one hears, rings up the heaven. At dawn there is a lonely shelf of rock above, a desolate wreck of human hopes below, and
"The gentle herd returns at evening close,
Untended from the hills, and white with snows."
Some of the Alpine districts are entirely pastoral, where naught save cow-herd's horn and cattle-bell is heard. In the spring it is a pretty sight to see the groups of cows with tinkling bells start for the mountains. The bells are nearly globular, thin, and light, of different sizes, from one foot to two inches in diameter; they are various in pitch, all melting into one general musical effect, forming in right harmonious proportion to produce the concord of sounds without any clashing tones, just as the song of many birds does.
"The tintinnabulation that so musically swells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells."
The cows are assembled in herds on the village green, and to the call of the herdsmen they begin their march to the mountain pastures. Each herd has its queen, who leads the procession. The choice of the queen depends on her strength and beauty. Great care and expense are incurred in the ambition to procure one peerless animal for this purpose, and in order to develop a combative and fearless spirit they are said to be fed on oats soaked in spirits. The queen wears a finer collar and larger bell than the others. Proud of her superior strength, she seems, with the calmness of a settled conviction, to be defying her companions, and to be seeking—impatient for combat—some antagonist worthy to measure strength with her. See
"How gracefully yon heifer bears her honors!
Ay! well she knows she's leader of the herd,
And take it from her, she'd refuse to feed."
At the end of the herd marches the bull, with his compact body, little pointed horns, curly hair, and, if he is of a wicked temper, a plate of iron over his eyes. Then comes the train of dairy-girls and cow-herds, who tend the cows in the summer pasturages, with wagons loaded with the implements of their calling, the milking-stool, peculiarly constructed pails, and the wooden vessels in which milk is carried up and down the precipices to the chalet.* When different droves meet, it is almost sure to happen that the two queens defy each other to single combat. The herdsmen themselves promote these struggles, and are very proud of the victory of their own queen cow. The herds begin by browsing on the grass at the foot of the mountain, and then gradually, as the snow disappears and is replaced by a fresh carpet of verdure, they go higher, mounting insensibly till in the month of August they reach the summit of the Alp. Then in September they descend slowly and by degrees, as they went up. On their way up the mountain, if the start be made too early in the spring, the water may be found high, and the herd stops at the edge of the torrent, afraid to cross. The chief herdsman seeks the parsonage, knocks at the door, and explains to the cure the critical situation of the herd, and begs his prayers and blessings.
"II faut que vous nous disiez une messe
Pour que nous puissions passer."
The shepherd leads a more solitary and perilous life in the mountains than the herdsman, living on polenta and cheese, and for drink, water or skimmed milk; and a little hay spread on a plank serves for a bed. The highest and steepest parts of the Alps are apportioned to the grazing of sheep and goats. Indeed, sometimes the sheep are carried up one by one on men's backs, and left there till the end of the summer, when they are carried down, considerably fattened, in the same fashion. Here the shepherd passes months, his only companions besides his flock are the chamois, who, in the moon-light, cross the snow-fields, the glacier, or bound over the crevices and come to pasture on the grassy slopes; and the snow-partridge, or white hen, and the laemmergeier, or bearded vulture, a bird whose size surpasses that of the eagle, and who circles around these peaks as he watches for his prey, and, by a sharp blow of his wing, to precipitate into the chasm any animal he can take unawares and defenceless.
Alas! for the poor shepherd belated in a snow-storm, seeking vainly to recover the lost track; when the wind seems like some cruel demon, buffeting, blinding, maddening, as along ways rendered unfamiliar by the drifts he plunges, helpless, hopeless ; fainter and more faint, until at last there comes the awful moment when he can fight no longer, and he sinks powerless down, down into the soft and fatal depths; the drift sweeps over him,—he is lost as surely as " some strong swimmer in his agony'' who sinks in mid- Atlantic among the boiling surge.
When the flock is taken to the Alps, the sheep, instead of being driven before the shepherd, regularly follow him as he marches majestically in front,—tall, thin, sunburnt, and dirty,—armed with his long iron-pointed stick. Behind him the whole mountain is covered with a moving mass of gray fleeces; other shepherds and Bergamese dogs, with long woolly hair, the most vigilant of guardians, are scattered at different points in this "living flood of white wool surging like foaming waves.'' The sheep do not disperse to feed until the chief shepherd, turning his face round to them, either by a whistle or notes from his pipe, seems to remind them that it is proper to do so. This leader or captain literally marches abroad in the morning piping his flocks forth to the pasture with some love sonnet, and his "fleecy care" seem actually to be under the influence of his music. It is by whistling that thousands of sheep are guided, the straying lambs called back, and the dogs sent out and checked. In September, when the shepherds bring down their flocks from the mountains, their wives and children, who have remained in the plain making hay, the harvest, the vintage, and gathering in of other fruits, go to meet them with songs and waving flags. In the evening the whole village rejoices, dancing goes on, and it is everybody's festival:
"At night returning, every labor sped,
He sits him down, the monarch of a shed;
Smiles by his cheerful fire, and round surveys
His children's looks, that brighten at the blaze;
While his loved partner, boastful of her hoard,
Displays her cleanly platter on the board."
The shepherds are happy men, content with their lot, loving their free and nomad mountain life with its long lazy times of rest and its moments of perilous activity. No simpler, honester, braver hearts are to be found anywhere.
There is also the female swine-herd, who daily takes to pasture the pigs and goats. She tends them all day on some stony, irreclaimed waste land. In the evening when she returns with her four or five score, each porker knows his own home in the village; some run on in advance of the herd to get as soon as possible to the supper they know will be ready for them; others do not separate themselves from the herd till they arrive at the familiar door. Behind the swine follow the goats with distended udders,—the poor man's cow. They, too, disperse themselves in the same fashion, from the desire to be promptly relieved of their burden.
Last of all come the deliberately-stepping, sober-minded cows. The tinkling of their bells is heard over the whole of the little village. In a few minutes the streets are cleared; every man, woman, and child appear to have followed the animals into the houses to give them their supper or to draw the milk from them, or, at all events, to bed them for the night. Thus do these peasants from their earliest years learn to treat their dumb associates kindly, almost as if they were members of the family, to the support of which they so largely contribute. They begin and end each day in company with them, and are perfectly familiar with the ways and wants of the egotistic pig, of the self-asserting, restless goat, and of the gentle, patient cow.
Winchester, Boyd. The Swiss Republic, J.B. Lippincott Company, 1891.
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