CHAPTER I
ORIGIN OF THE PEOPLE
riply woven of the French, German and Italian races, the Swiss nation discovers in its Romand or French strain another triple weave of Celtic-Romand-Burgundian descent.
While the high mountainous regions of eastern Switzerland were early scaled and settled by the Germanic tribes, the western were still earlier inhabited by the ancient Celtic-Helvetians and then civilized and cultivated by the most luxurious of Roman colonies. Resisting first and then happily mingling with their Roman conquerors, the Celtic people were transformed into a Romand race, similar in speech and origin to the French. In the heart of this Romand country was an ancient principality where the essential qualities of the beauty loving and imaginative races, Roman and Celtic, expressed themselves uniquely. A fountain of Celtic song and legend, a centre of chivalry and warlike power, this principality is known only to the outer world by the pastoral product which bears its name "Gruyère."
Remarkable in the interest of the unbroken line of its valorous and lovable princes, and in the precious and enchanting race mixture of its brave, laughter-loving people, its supreme historical interest lies in its little recorded and astonishing political significance among the independent feudal principalities of Europe.
When the Teuton barbarians came to devastate the enchanting loveliness of the templed Roman garden which was Switzerland for three idyllic centuries, they stopped at last at the penultimate peaks of the Occidental Alps, at a certain region called aux fenils (ad fines), where a glacial stream rushes across the narrow valley of the Griesbach, among the southern mountains of the Bernese Oberland. Thus western or Romand Switzerland preserves a character definitely apart from the eastern, and this barrier across the Bernese valley, unpassed for a thousand years, still divides the German from the Romand speaking peasantry. To the north and west lies Gruyère, greenest of pastoral countries, uniquely set in a ring of azure heights, where like a lost Provence, the Romand spirit has preserved its eternal youthfulness and charm. Greatly loved by all the Swiss, its annals piously preserved by ancient chroniclers, this country is German only in its eastern rocky portion; but where the castle stands and in all the wide valleys which open towards the setting sun, it is of purest Romand speech and character. Here ruled for six hundred years a sovereign line of counts whose history, a pastoral epic, is melodious with song and legend, and glowing with all the pageantry and chivalry of the middle ages. Although skirted by the great Roman roads, and flanked by outpost towers, Gruyère was never romanized, being settled only in its outlying plains by occasional Gallo-Roman villas, while the interior country, ringed by a barrier of almost inaccessible mountains, was left to the early Helvetian adventurers who had first penetrated its wild forests and its mountain fastnesses. Here, unaffected alike by Roman domination or Teuton destruction, they had set up the altars of their Druid faith and here preserved their ancient customs and their speech.
Here also traveled the adventurous Greek merchants from old Massilia (Marseilles), leaving in their buried coins and in the Greek words of the Gruyère dialect the impress of their ancient visitation.