Liauba! Liauba! in order to milk.”
It is a song of melancholy, of the homesickness in which the absent Swiss sees again, as in a musical vision, the chalet in which he was born, the mountain where the herds shake their mellow bells as they graze. It is, however, only in the refrain that is heard the melancholy note, in this Liauba! Liauba! thrown lingeringly to the winds, and going from echo to echo, till it expires like a lament, and is lost like a sigh in the infinite depths of the valley. The herds are said to love and obey its strains. Without anything striking in the composition, it has a powerful influence over the Swiss. Its effect on Swiss soldiers absent in foreign service was so great, giving rise to an irrepressible longing to return to their own country, that it was forbidden to be played in the Swiss regiments in the French service, on pain of death. All the music of the mountains is strange and wild, having most probably received its inspiration from the grandeur of the natural objects. Most of the sounds partake of the character of echoes, being high-keyed but false notes, such as the rocks send back to the valleys when the voice is raised above its natural key in order that it may reach the caverns and savage recesses of inaccessible precipices. The Swiss yodel, with its falsetto notes, is heard everywhere. Nor must the sounds of the landscape be forgotten. With the bleating of the flocks and the chimes of the cow-bells are mingled the murmuring of the bees, the running streams, whispering pines, the melancholy voice of the goat-herder, and the plaintive whistle of the mountain thrush.
Every member of a Swiss family produces his share. The whole family take up their daily work before sunrise, suspend it only for their meals, and end it only when the candles are put out at early bedtime. The feeble efforts of old age and the petty industry of childhood contribute to the sum of human toil. Children all work with their hands for the common support, they help the elders in the common family interests as soon as they can rock a cradle, drive a cow, or sweep a floor; they thus acquire at home habits of application and industry which stand them in good stead in after life. The little ones who are taken by their parents to the field and are too young to work have bells fastened to their belts, not for amusement, but, as the mothers explain, “when we are in the fields and the children wander away, thanks to the bells, we can always hear and find them, and, besides, the sound of the bell drives away the serpents.”[91] Even the infant in its baby-carriage passes the day amid the scenes of labor in which it will soon be called to join. The women are not exempt from work, even in the families of very substantial peasant proprietors. A stranger, seeing the smart country girls at work about the cows’ food or in the harvest field, perhaps barefooted, is apt to consider it as a proof of extreme destitution. This is a mistake; it is merely the custom of the country. A well-to-do peasant’s daughters, who are stylishly dressed on Sundays, may be seen in the fields during the week. You see the sturdy sunburnt creatures in petticoats, but otherwise manlike, toiling side by side with their fathers and brothers in the rudest work of the farm. They wear a broad-brimmed straw hat, and as the breeze blows back its breadth of brim, the sunshine constantly adds depth to the brown glow of their cheeks. In the absence of the men the women do all the work,—mow the grass, cut the wood, look after the cattle, make the cheese, bake the bread, and spin the wool. Whether they are employed in spreading the litter on the floor of the stable, in carrying the pails foaming with the freshly-drawn milk, or in turning up with long wooden rakes the newly-mown hay, all their different labors resemble festivals. From one hill to another, above the bed of the mountain torrent, they reply to the songs of the young reapers by chanting national airs, it may be Rufst du, mein Vaterland (“callest thou, my country”)! Their voices resemble modulated cries emitted by a superabundance of life and joy; musicians note them down without being able to imitate them; they are indigenous only on the waters or on the green slopes of the Alps. The distinction between the sexes as to labor in Switzerland has passed the temporary stage of evolution. Is it not true everywhere that women are entering a new era of self-care; that they are undertaking not only office-work, but professions, and trades, and farm-work? and the change is going on with great speed. The woman of fifty years ago would not only have refused to undertake what the woman to-day achieves; she would have failed in it if she had. The field of housework was in the last century vastly wider than it is to-day; yet woman filled it. She spun and wove and knit as well as sewed; and each household was a factory as well as a home. This sort of work was differentiated by machinery and taken away from our houses and wives. For a time woman was made more helpless and dependent than ever before. But a readjustment appears to be going on. Woman has gone out of the house and followed work. The sex is developing a robustness and alertness and enterprise that we had attributed to man alone; it is a revolutionary change in the mental adaptability, physical endurance, and business capacity of woman.
The Swiss peasants may not shine by brilliant qualities or seductive manners, but they are strongly framed, broad-chested, powerful, calm in countenance, frank and open in expression, with bright eyes, and largely sculptured features, but of rather heavy gait. The women are active in figure, with expanded shoulders, supple arms, elastic limbs, blue eyes, and healthy complexions. Light hair largely predominates, ninety out of one hundred have hair of the different shades that make auburn, from the very light-brown to the very fair, but few have red hair, and scarcely any black. A mixture of manly beauty and feminine modesty is harmoniously blended in their physiognomy; they appear robust without coarseness; and their voices are soft and musical, common to dwellers in cold countries. With these peasants where the homespun is not unknown every one eats the bread of carefulness. They are frugal and sparing in food; in the larder there is left little for the mice at night. The diet of rye bread, milk, cheese, and potatoes is at least wholesome, for they are all produced at home. They use but little fresh meat, and mostly vegetables and bread. Of the latter they are the champion consumers, it being estimated that the yearly bread consumption is as high as three hundred and six pounds per capita. Meeting children on the country road or village street, you are sure to find almost every one of them munching bread, and it will be entirely guiltless of sugar or jam. With the poorer classes meagre cheese is the staple food. This is made of skimmed milk, and if not positively bad, this negation of badness is its only virtue. Also dried or mummy beef is much used. In the high mountain valleys the air is so dry that for nine months out of the twelve meat has no tendency to decomposition; availing themselves of this favorable condition, they kill in the autumn the beef, pork, and game they will require for the ensuing year. It is slightly salted and hung up to dry; in three or four months’ time it is not only dried, but also cooked, at least the air has given it all the cooking it will ever receive. It has become as dry and hard as a board, and internally of the color of an old mahogany table; externally there is nothing to suggest the idea of meat, and it is undistinguishable from fragments of the mummies of the sacred bulls taken from the catacombs at Memphis. Strange as it may appear, when cut across the grain in shavings no thicker than writing-paper, it is found not badly flavored, nor unusually repugnant to the process of digestion. What is lacking in quality of the peasant’s food is made up in quantity or rather the frequency with which it is partaken of. There is early breakfast, lunch at nine A.M., called from its hour s’nüni, dinner at twelve, lunch again at four P.M., called s’vierli, and supper. It is astonishing to see how much solid flesh, good blood, and healthy color can be produced by such inferior and limited diet.
The language of the peasants is characterized by rough gutturals and the force with which dentals and hissing sounds are pronounced, a sing-song accent, with numerous diminutions, contractions, and omissions of the final syllable. There is much of what is designated under the general name of patois,—a mixture of Celtic, Latin, and Italian words; a Babylonish dialect,—a parti-colored dress of patched and piebald languages. This corrupt dialect is very sonorous and very harmonious, but is the relic of an almost extinguished antiquity. In the Engadine, and the remote valleys of the Swiss Alps adjoining Italy and the Tyrol, the peasants use the Romansch and Ladin; the latter is more musical, and to give an idea of it the following verse from a popular song is transcribed:
“Montagnas, ste bain!
Tu gad e valleda,
Tu fraischa contreda,
Squir eir in mi adsinga,
Montagnas, ste bain!”