Account of the Romansh Language / In a Letter to Sir John Pringle, Bart. P. R. S.

by Joseph Planta

From the difficulty those persevering veterans experienced in keeping this stubborn people in awe, I mean to infer that such strenuous asserters of their independence, whom the flattering pens of Ovid and Horace represent as formidable even to Augustus, and preferring death to the loss of their liberties,[Y] favoured by the natural strength and indigence of their country, were not very likely to be so far subdued by any foreign power inferior to the Roman, as to suffer any considerable revolution in their customs and language: for as to the irruptions of the Goths, Vandals, and Lombards, in the fifth and sixth centuries, besides a profound silence in history concerning any successful attempt of those barbarians upon this spot, it is scarce credible, that any of them should have either wished or endeavoured to settle in a country, perhaps far less hospitable than that which they had just forsaken, especially after they had opened to themselves a way into the fertile plains of Lombardy.

Some stress must be laid upon this inference, as the history of what befel this country after the decline of the Roman empire is so intimately blended with that of Suabia, the Tyrolese, and the lower parts of the Grisons, which are known to have fallen to the share of the rising power of the Franks, that nothing positive can be drawn from authors as to the interior state of this small tract. The victory gained in the year 496 near Cologn, by Clovis I. king of the Franks, over the Alemanni, who had wrested from the Romans all the dominions on the northern side of the Alps; and the defeat of both Romans and Goths in Italy, in the year 549, by the treacherous arms of Theodebert king of Austrasia, whose dominions soon after devolved to the crown of France, necessarily gave the aspiring Merovingian race a great ascendency over all the countries surrounding the Grisons; and accordingly we find, that this district also was soon after, without any military effort, considered as part of the dominions of the reviving western empire. But it does not appear that those monarchs ever made any other use of their supremacy in these parts than, agreeably to the feudal system which they introduced, to constitute dukes, earls, presidents, and bailiffs, over Rhaetia; to grant out tenures upon the usual feudal terms; and consequently to levy forces in most of their military expeditions.

It must, however, be observed, that these feudal substitutes were seldom, if ever, strangers: those who are upon record to the latter end of the eighth century, having all been chosen from among the nobility of the country.[Z] And that no foreign garrisons were ever maintained for any continuance of time in these parts, appears from a circumstance related by their annalists;[AA] who say, that an inroad of the Huns in 670, when external forces would probably have been very acceptable to the natives, was repulsed merely by a concourse of the inhabitants.

History continues to furnish us with proofs of the little connexion this people had with other nations in their domestic affairs, notwithstanding their dependance upon a foreign power. In the year 780, the Bishop of Coire, who by the constitution of that see can only be a native,[AB] obtained from Charlemain, besides many considerable honours and privileges in the empire, a grant of the supreme authority in this country, by the investiture of the office of hereditary president or bailiff over all Rhaetia. His successors not only enjoyed this prerogative to the extinction of the Carlovingian race of emperors in 911; but received accumulated favours from other succeeding monarchs, as the bigoted devotion of those times or motives of interest prompted them. And so far did their munificence gradually extend, that the sole property of one of the three leagues[AC] was at one time vested in the hands of the bishop.

This prelate and the nobles, the greatest part of whom became his retainers, availed themselves, like all the German princes, of the confusion, divisions, and interreigns which frequently distracted the empire in the succeeding centuries, in order to establish a firm and unlimited authority of their own. Henceforth the annals of this country furnish us with little more than catalogues of the bishops and dukes, who were still, at times, nominated by the emperors; and of the domains granted out by them to different indigenate families; with accounts of the atrocious cruelties exercised by these lords over their vassals; and with anecdotes of the prowess of the natives in several expeditions into Italy and Palestine, in which they still voluntarily accompanied the emperors.

The repeated acts of tyranny exercised by those arbitrary despots, who had now shaken off all manner of restraint, at length exasperated the people into a general revolt, and brought on the confederacy; in which the bishop and most of the nobles were glad to join, in order to screen themselves from the fury of the insurgents.

The first step towards this happy revolution was made by some venerable old men dressed in the coarse grey cloth of the country, who in the year 1424 met privately in a wood near a place called Truns, in the Upper League; where, impressed with a sense of their former liberties,[AD] they determined to remonstrate against, and oppose, the violent proceedings of their oppressors. The abbot Dissentis was the first who countenanced their measures; their joint influence gradually prevailed over several of the most moderate among the nobles; and hence arose the league which, from the colour of its first promoters, was ever called the Grey League; which, from its being the first in the bold attempt to shake off the yoke of wanton tyranny, has ever since retained the pre-eminence in rank before the two other leagues; and which has even given its name to the whole country, whose inhabitants, from the circumstances of their deliverance, pride themselves in the appellation of Grisones, or the grey-ones.[AE] From this period nothing has ever affected their freedom and absolute independence, which they now enjoy in the most unlimited sense, in spite of the repeated efforts of the house of Austria to recover some degree of ascendency over them.

From this concise view of the history of the Grisons, in which I have carefully guarded against favouring any particular hypothesis, it appears, that as no foreign nation ever gained any permanent footing in the most mountainous parts of this country since the establishment of the Tuscans and Romans, the language now spoken could never have suffered any considerable alterations from extraneous mixtures of modern languages. And to those who may object, that languages like all other human institutions will, though left to themselves, be inevitably affected by the common revolutions of time, I shall observe, that a language, in which no books are written, but which is only spoken by a people chiefly devoted to arms and agriculture, and consequently not cultivated by the criticisms of men of taste and learning, is by no means exposed to the vicissitudes of those that are polished by refined nations;[AF] and that, however paradoxical it may appear, it is nevertheless true, that the degeneracy of a language is more frequently to be attributed to an extravagant refinement than to the neglect of an illiterate people, unless indeed external causes interfere. May we not hence conclude, that as the Romansh has never been used in any regular composition in writing till the sixteenth century, nor affected by any foreign invasion or intimate connexion, it is not likely to have received any material change before the period of its being written? And we have the authority of the books since printed to prove, that it is at present the identical language that was spoken two hundred years ago. These arguments will receive additional weight from the proofs I shall hereafter give of the great affinity there is between the language as it is now spoken, and the Romance that was used in France nine centuries ago.

When we further consider the facts I have above briefly related, the wonder will cease, that in a cluster of mountains, situated in the centre of Europe, a distinct language (not a dialect or jargon of those spoken by the contiguous nations, as has been generally imagined) should have maintained itself through a series of ages, in spite of the many revolutions which frequently changed the whole face of the adjacent countries. And indeed, so obstinately tenacious are these people of their independency, laws, customs, and consequently of their very language, that, as has been already observed, their form of government, especially in judicial matters, still bears evident marks of the ancient Tuscan constitution; and that, although they be frequently exposed to inconveniences from their stubbornness in this respect, they have not yet been prevailed upon to adopt the Gregorian reformation of the calendar.

As to the nature of this language, it may now be advanced, with some degree of confidence, that the Cialover owes it origin to a mixture of the Tuscan and of the dialect of the Celtic spoken by the Lepontii; and that the introduction of the vulgar Roman affected it in some degree, but particularly gave rise to the Ladin; the vocabulary of which, as any one may be convinced by inspecting a few lines of the bible, has a great affinity with that of the Latin tongue. But these assertions rest merely upon historical evidence; for as to the Cialover, all that it may have retained of the Tuscan or Roman, is so much disfigured by an uncouth pronunciation and a vague orthography, that all etymological inquiries are thereby rendered intricate and unsatisfactory. And as to the Ladin, although its derivation be more manifest, yet we are equally at a loss from what period or branch of the Latin tongue to trace its real origin; for I have found, after many tedious experiments, that even the vocabulary, in which the resemblance is most evident, differs equally from the classical purity of Tully, Caesar, and Sallust, as it does from the primitive Latin of the twelve tables, of Ennius, and the columna rostralis of Duillius, which has generally been thought the parent of the Gallic Romance; as also from the trivial language of Varro, Vegetius, and Columella. May we not from this circumstance infer, that, as is the case in all vernacular tongues, the vulgar dialect of the Romans, the sermo usualis, rusticus, pedestris,[AG] of which there are no monuments extant, differed very widely both in pronunciation and construction from that which has at any time been used either in writing or in the senate?