[5] Professor Joseph Bergmann, in an extremely learned booklet (“Untersuchungen über die freyen Walliser oder Walser.” Vienna, Carl Gerold, 1844) has proved that our Walsers, an industrious people of Burgundian stock, emigrated hitherward from the Swiss Canton Wallis (Valais) at the end of the thirteenth century and settled in this wild valley and its surroundings. It is they who brought it to its present high state of prosperity. They have kept their Swiss accent to this day, with certain idioms of their own—not every Englishman can translate “Wie tüschalat’s Bobbe so schö im Pfülfli!”—and their costume is more strange than beautiful. In olden days nearly every settlement here (Bludenz, Feldkirch, Nenzing, etc.) had its own costume. There are only three left now; that of the Walserthal, the Montavon, and Bregenzerwald.
[6] I cannot suggest what Tabalada means unless it be what I think it is—a comical perversion of its Romansh name Aulat=aqua lauta, a name appropriate up to a few years ago, for it was the most crystalline water I ever saw, till we forced some of the discolored Ill to flow into it, for factory purposes at Gais. And the real name of the “Feldbächle” is Montiola-bach, which is also Latin; all that hilly region where it rises used to be called Montiola; indeed, a great number of the place-names I shall be mentioning have origin in Romansh, which is such a detestable word that I mean to call it Rhæto-Roman in future.
Our old Rhætian inhabitants, now held to be Celts and not Etruscans as certain scholars used to maintain, were defeated by Drusus and Tiberius in 15 b. c. in this very plain—so tradition says; certainly the Walgau is marked as “Vallis Drusiana” in old charts and chronicles, though another derivation is yet more plausible (see p. 152). The province was thereafter romanized, and traces of this Latin domination can be found, for instance, in those single personal names like Florentinus, Seganus, Ursicinus, which persisted hereabouts into the twelfth century; the present double family ones, of Alemannic origin, became fixed by the end of the thirteenth. As to our Rhæto-Roman names of localities—some of them speak for themselves; there is no difficulty about Scesaplana, Alpila, Fontanella, Quadera and so on, though it is rather puzzling to find a high rocky summit called “Valbona.” Lutz is lutum, the turbid stream; Ludesch (Lodasco) stands on its banks. Bludesch was called Pludassis (paludes) by reason of its swampy situation. The Fön, the hot wind, is Favonius. Lagutz=lacus, a lake; which it doubtless used to be. Raggal (Roncal in chronicles), Rungalin and other such sites=runcare. Gamperdona=campus rotundus, which you will find most apposite, if you go there. Other place-names are not so easy to disentangle. Barplons=Pratum planum. Vanova=Via nova. The “Schlosstobel” at the foot of Blumenegg castle used to be called “Falster”=Vallis torrens. Trasseraus=tres suors (sorores). Frastafeders is simply “old Frastanz.” One thing strikes me as suggestive. That Rhætians or Romans should give names to conspicuous peaks—Vallula, Zimba, Furka, Saladina: there are dozens of them—is intelligible enough. You can see a mountain from below, without climbing up. You cannot see a lake from below. Yet the names of some of our secluded Alpine waters, like Tilisuna and Formarin, whatever their origin, are not Alemannic and are therefore pre-Alemannic; which proves that these remote and inhospitable spots were already then frequented for the sake, no doubt, of their brief summer pasturage. Whence I deduce that the population of those days must have been denser than one generally imagines. Formarin, for the rest, is pronounced “Famurin” which may be “Val Murin,” from the quantities of marmots (mure montana, contracted into our “Burmentli”) up there. If this conjecture sounds far-fetched, let me hasten to say that it is not mine, but that of Max Vermunt (“Stille Winkel in Vorarlberg”).
[7] We had our ups and downs in later times. One of the “ups” was when the factory was partially burnt some thirty years ago, and the insurance compensation enabled us not only to rebuild it on a far finer scale, but to purchase the neighboring establishment of Gais which happened to be in the market.
[8] The Fön, if it then existed, may be responsible for the destruction by fire of so many of the prehistoric Swiss lake settlements.
[9] “Hystorische Relation,” etc., of Rhetia by Johann Georg Schlehen of Rottweyl. There is a copy in the British Museum. His name is Schlee; the Schlehen on the title-page is the accusative.
[10] Justice was dispensed in sight of the gallows, the signa meri imperi, near the Hanging Stone (a conspicuous cliff on the Bludenz road)—dispensed upon a certain fateful meadow, the path to which used to be known as the “gallows’ way,” and the meadow itself “Gerichti” (Court of Justice). These names seem to have faded out of the popular memory. I like to think that the proceedings took place near that wide-branching oak, by far the finest in the district, at whose foot I used to recline in olden days. It stands between the Hanging Stone and our present railway station, opposite that detestable new cement factory, on the south side of the line. There is certainly a path leading to it from the cliff, and perhaps some dim tradition attached to this oak has saved it from the ax through all these years.
[11] I have just discovered, rummaging among some old papers, a musical composition by my mother entitled “Blumenegg.” It is dated October, 1861; three years before her marriage.
[12] The former of these speaks of Milton’s “habitually loose botany.” No great blemish; given the themes he loved, it might be argued that much of Milton’s peculiar aroma would evaporate, had he been meticulous in such details like Tennyson or de Tabley. Theocritus is hard to catch napping; but Ovid, for example, tells us that buxus grows on Mount Hymettus. There is no box on Hymettus, though it prospers in certain gardens of Athens (e. g., the Crown Prince’s); Ovid was thinking of the dwarf holly. It is the worst of writing poetry, that you are apt to be torn between respect for truth and the exigencies of scansion. What would the painfully correct Lucretius have done with this buxus?
[13] Professor K. W. von Dalla Torre mentions him in his “Zoologische Literatur von Tirol und Vorarlberg bis inclusive 1885.” He enumerates eighteen different monographs by him, dealing with the fauna alone of this province. (His botanical works are more important.) He also notes that Bruhin is “at present (1886) in Columbus, Ohio, U. S. A.” It is a far cry to Ohio! If he stayed there any length of time, he is sure to have made a name for himself. He always signs himself “Th. A.”; Dalla Torre calls him “Theodor,” which is probably correct; in the list of subscribers to Heer’s “Urwelt der Schweiz” (1865, p. xviii) he figures as “Thomas.”