an unknown switzerland

An Unknown SwitzerlandAuthor(s): Violet AlfordSource: Folklore, Vol. 51, No. 2 (Jun., 1940), pp. 122-131Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of Folklore Enterprises, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1256742 .

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122 Collectanea

me, as she would interfere. She told Mrs. B. that a birthmark on the baby's leg was a picture of some food the baby wanted, and as it looked like an apple she had better give the baby apple jelly.

(2) Another patient, at the same time, had a very restless

baby, and a fellow-nurse of mine, who was attending her, com- mented on the fact. Mrs. S. said " Perhaps it's the raspberry juice," and explained that when baby cried, her own mother said it must be desiring some special food, so they must try various foods to see what the baby wanted. Baby had accepted the

raspberry juice, so that must have been the right one.

(It disagreed, nevertheless.) (3) An inflamed breast is sometimes treated in Cornwall by a

poultice of figs; and by Gypsy women in Hertfordshire by boiling a turnip, scooping it out, and clapping it on the breast. I should think both would be quite effective.

(4) To reduce the flow of milk. I have only met one bit of folk-medicine on this subject.

Nurse S., of Falmouth, told me that in Cornwall there lingers a belief that a comb worn under a breast binder next to the skin

will dry up the milk. I cannot conjecture the reason. Perhaps someone else may

be able to throw light on this custom. S. BONHAM-CARTER

AN UNKNOWN SWITZERLAND

TEN days before the storm burst over Europe, I was sitting under a burning sun, looking at the seemingly endless passage of the first great procession of the Swiss National Trachtenfest. A complimentary ticket, gracefully offered by the Costume

Federation, gave me a seat on the Tribune of Honour and again at the evening displays, a place always near the Director of the

Federation, his wife, who is head of the Heimatwerk department, or the Secretary. So my observations were confirmed or cor- rected by the most capable experts in the country. The ladies

wore each her own regional costume, the Secretary's mother



Collectanea 123

made a charming and elegant figure in the dress of Neuchatel, and as always in such circumstances, I suffered a sort of humil- iation that an Englishwoman could produce no costume, but must appear in the banal fashion of the day.' Long pennants emblazoned with the arms of each Canton flew above our heads, a striped awning attenuated the brilliant sunshine-and inter- fered badly with photography. Trumpeters in sixteenth-cen-

tury dress stationed in a high stone balcony, heralded each Canton with appropriate music, as the 8ooo processionalists strolled, marched, drove, rode and danced past us for three hours or more. On the Sunday morning their numbers had swollen by another thousand; the Saturday evening, Sunday afternoon and evening were filled by immense gatherings in the immense Festhalle of the Zurich National Exhibition on either side of the lake. That much more than costume was in question became evident even in the first procession. In the Festhalle we were treated to a wonderful and spiritually moving out-

pouring of folk culture, never displayed to Switzerland's

invading tourists, each Canton showing the rest its heredi-

tary treasures. So, taking the processions as a groundwork I shall glance into the Festhalle from time to time to avoid

repetition. A trampling of eighty horses ridden by " peasant sons " from

Zurich Canton led their thousands of guests. The ancient core of Switzerland filled the place of honour, so first came the four old forest Cantons, Uri displaying the perhaps mythical hero, Wilhelm Tell, a splendid bearded type, and his sturdy boy. They brought their champion Fahnenschwinger with them, who held up the procession to send his short-handled, square flag hurtling into the skies before the Tribunes. In the Festhalle seven of these ceremonial flag-throwers got together, to show

1 A study of this lack makes one believe that England is too flat and her communications too easy ever to have allowed regional dresses to have crystallized. Fashions arrived too quickly. Nevertheless country wear might under wise guidance have become a recognized English dress, even since the rise of interest in folk dance and song. Local lace, Honiton, Buckingham and so on, sun bonnets, smocking, quilting are all at hand to draw upon still.



124 Collectanea

every imaginable movement, " cast " and " catch " that human nature can devise. This curious tradition is much followed in

Holland, but there the flags are of enormous size, and are swirled in complicated movements rather than thrown to great heights. Schwyz followed Uri, and now at once we were shown one of the most interesting survivals in the Federation. A clamour of deep-toned bells drew near. The crowds, Swiss

though they were, knew but little of their own rural traditions and expected a herd of cows. What came into sight however was a crowd of white-clad figures, running, spinning like tops, suddenly bobbing earthwards with bent knees. They wore

amiable-looking masks and long white beards, their heads bore erections of cardboard in the shape of gigantic mitres, they carried enormous cowbells, which made such a clanging as to drown every band in their vicinity including the trumpets. When they appeared at night the full flavour could be extracted, for then the immense mitres were lit up inside, and the procession came in out of the dark on to a darkened stage. Amongst them is a grave figure, St. Nicholas himself, and his varlet, Knecht Ruprecht accompanies him. This last wears dark

clothes, sinister among the white, and carries on his back a bag in which to bear off children who will not say their prayers. But all are Klduse, and the " running " on the night of December

6th is the Klausjagen. Why a hunt ? Pagan midwinter custom

and Christian saint here merge. At Christmastide and Carnival

other purely pagan runners go a-hunting. They hunt the

Wild Hunt which once was Wotan and his pack (at least in

Germanic countries) now confused with any evil influences, such

as the Returned Spirits of the Dead and the Winter Spirits. Or

maybe they once represented Wotan and so are evil Spirits themselves. But with knowledge of similar Carnival creatures

whose mythology is ignorant of Wotan, and whose running is

looked for as signs of Spring, I think not. I think they are

applying the magic formula " a hair of the tail of the dog which bit him," and that they are seeking with bell-ringing and whip- cracking to hunt the hunters. To meet them and to hear them in their own mountains in Carnival time is a thing never

to be forgotten. A year or two ago I went to find them at



Collectanea 125

Einsiedeln. The celebrated Black Virgin, who routed heathen- dom in the " dark forest " has not entirely finished her job. For three days and three nights, the Sunday, Monday and Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, they run, going home only when ex- hausted to sleep awhile, after which they are up and off again. Youths and men, they run in packs or singly. They wear home- made masks or ancient (or new) hand-carved wooden ones. Of these every village keeps a supply. Some are merely comic, others are the most villainous visages ever conceived, culminat-

ing in the masks of ogres with babies impaled on a horn, seen in the museum at Innsbrtick. They tie a pillow on behind, on which rests a huge cowbell attached to a cow collar worn as a waistbelt. The clanging came surging upstairs and into the weinstube of the ancient inn, the Innkeeper and maids all stand-

ing respectfully aside, as a dozen Runners came jogging up to me to pay their respects in jumps and clamour. When spoken to they replied in the squeaky voices of Carnival Guisers wher- ever they may be, and after a little beer clanged out again. All

night long-and I spent a wakeful night so powerful was the

Spring magic and the heat of the porcelain stove-the bells could be heard approaching, receding, as the Runners ran from chalet to chalet across the snow. Sharp cracks broke the monot-

ony of the ringing, and earlier in the evening I had learnt what this meant. Looking down a narrow street I saw a man cracking a whip with the noise of pistol shots, as the lash, some eight feet

long, streaked like lightning between the walls of the houses. He was entirely alone, asking no audience, and there in that

Alpine village, he recalled to me another lonely Guiser, clad in

goatskins, reeling drunk with heady red wine, who had harnessed himself to a cart, and was pulling it up and down-not to mention across-a grey Pyrenean street.2 Both, without a

thought of onlookers, were doing what they were doing, because it was the season when it should be done, and no good would come if it were left undone. The Klausjagen, picking up Saint Niklaus and his day in the course of ages, have annexed his name and his mitre, but they run and clang, blow sinister horns

"See my Pyrenean Festivals, p. 23. Chatto and Windus, London, 1937.



I26 Collectanea

and bob, and whip-crackers go with them even into the Festhalle at Zurich. Others from Canton Appenzell, also called Kliuse, come out on Christmas Eve. They too wear enormous bells, and go from house to house dancing and singing. They are dressed very smartly in silk and velvet. Many are " ladies," and all wear headpieces manufactured by themselves. These are covered with thousands of beads, and represent topical scenes built up in relief, such as the Sentis mountain railway and a favourite inn with its sign, Am Storch. All appearance of Wild Hunt or Returned Souls has departed from these up-to- date Runners.

Unterwalden, trudging along the processional way, was en

route, so the programme said, for a Chilbi, one of those gatherings, fair, sports, wrestling, cowfighting, on some flat green alp. They took with them the Wildmann and his wild wife, mountain

creatures, benevolent I think, clad in moss, masked with the usual hand-carved wooden mask, dancing Comics. The Wild

Man is well known in the German and Swiss Alps. He seems to

be the same personage as the Green Man, Green Georg, Le

Feuillu of the Juras, and our Jack-in-the-Green, a personifica- tion of renewed vegetation, in fact the May. The shepherds and

cowmen on the Rigi keep a gigantic mask belonging to the Rigi

Vater, under whose care they live and work. But he does not

appear particularly in the Spring, and is regarded as the spirit of the mountain. We were not allowed to see him down in the

city. Canton Berne, numbering 1300 processionalists, solemnly

marched by. Great stalwart girls with great stalwart ankles

danced the Mistrdppeler with valiant male partners, a dance

which must be the most western example of the Schuhplattle type, at least it is getting on that way. The Gduerle, a pair dance

from Einsiedeln a little more to the east, is a more recognisable member of the same family, each man showing off to his heart's

content even to the Kibby or Cossack step, while his partner

spins alone. The jodling, calling, yapping, stamping that goes on when twenty couples are at it, is something to be remem-

bered. Various holds, and a final lift of the woman by the man, show its relationship. It is interesting to find the beginnings of



Collectanea 127

Bavarian and Tyrolese types in Switzerland, and the first of the Landler family begins, I find, the moment one is east of the Jura. The top of this range on the contrary still clings to the French Ronde, and shows French influence in dress and music. The dances and music of the French-speaking Cantons are always a disappointment. The best French types are dwindling, and Switzerland seems to have put into them nothing of herself.

Country dance types are danced in the Valais, also a Maypole dance by men and women. Canton Vaud has a variant of the

Monferrine, known all along the Italian side of the Alps until it meets the Austrian dances which reach down over the Brenner. But to this music we were given a ballet, very poorly conceived- the only mistake in the programme. The Vaudois also filched a dance from Canton Fribourg, and this they certainly heard about later! It was an example of a still-living Carole, the ancient name for the Round, and the historical parent of many a Ronde Ferm&e and Ronde Ouverte from France. They are Coraules in Fribourg, where the most northern form of the langue d'oc is still spoken in the French part of the Canton, and the one stolen was A Moldson in honour of the best loved mountain. History says that a Count of Gruyere allowed the grande coraule to set off from his castel into the valley below, catching up townspeople, workpeople and seigneurs. It was then a Ronde Ouverte, which is the Farandole. Geneva Canton gave us a version of the old Rigaudon, or a dance showing its influence. The Rigaudon lives in the Dauphin6, Haute Provence and Basse Provence, so it is not surprising to find it has filtered into the most south-westerly Canton of Switzerland. On the whole the folk-dances of Switzerland are not interesting. The Gduerle alone merits that adjective to my mind.

Besides its Coraules Canton Fribourg gave me a wider notion of the distribution of the Charivari, so dreaded in Basque and Landais villages. This ceremony lives throughout the langue d'oc speaking countries, and thus is found here at the most northern extension of that tongue. Not that the speakers of the language have any monopoly of the obnoxious institution for it is well known in England under the names of Rough Music and Riding the Stang. In the French-speaking part of Fribourg



128 Collectanea

the usual rowdy group of men and boys goes out to punish the

marriage of an old man to a young girl, a thing detested in village life and the cause of perhaps most Charivaris from the Atlantic to the Alps. On the programme it is described as Katzenmusik

(very aptly) and consists of whip-cracking, cattle bells-the most handy noise-producers in this pastoral land, and of a trough for kneading bread turned upside down on two wooden runners, and worked to and fro with excruciating squeaks and groans, a

proud boy seated thereon, to give it weight I suppose. A mock bridal pair, old man, young girl, marched in front to underline the uses of the Charivari.

Amongst the scores of village bands, accordion bands, mene-

strels and all kinds of music, a peculiarly stirring drumming and

fifing struck the ear. This came from the Basle town contingent, and from one of those extraordinary cliques, which at four

o'clock on a Carnival morning usher in the Spring. These fife

and drum bands, with traditional airs and demoniac syncopa-

tion, are composed of respectable citizens, wearing the same

company disguise, all wearing fantastic head-dresses lit up inside. Their turn of wit is topical and political, and the bitter

dawn which saw me in the streets of Basle was enlivened by a

hundred Hitler's heads, illuminated within. I suppose they hate

their neighbour across the Rhine too much now to mock him, for this August sortie saw ordinary comic masks. This curious

modern and urban folk ebullition has been described already in

Folk-Lore.3

The famous modiste of St. Gall must have been overworked

for weeks, for her handiwork graced the heads of hundreds of

girls and women. This head-dress is composed of either gold or

silver fine wire. A silk or velvet cap fits the head, and the metal-

work stands up behind like a shining outspread fan about 2 ft.

in diameter. Behind these stately figures came a queer company led by their " King " on horseback. These were the R6llibutzen

(belled Guisers) from Altstatten in the same Canton. As I have

seen them in their own town I will describe what they do at

home. They are Carnival maskers, and belong to a men's

society formed some years ago to prevent abuse and horseplay. 9 Vol. xlviii, Dec. 1937. Violet Alford. Two Urban Folk Festivals.



Collectanea 129

They come out in large numbers under the orders of the King and other officers. They wear small bells, white breeches and

long boots, dark coats and simpering masks of net, often with a flower held inappropriately between the teeth like a Sevillana. On their heads are wonderful creations made of beads, flowers, plumes, artificial fruits and clouds of ribbons. They march and countermarch in simple figures to a band. Since the " refor- mation " each man squires a marching gjrl, which is a pity. Before that they tore hither and thither, squirting people with

water, and on occasion plunging themselves and their captives into the town fountain. They still perform this rain magic by squirting onlookers, jumping three times before they do so.

They made a fine show, even in the streets of Zurich. Here I will describe another set of Carnival beings, also repre-

sented in the procession-the Fools of northern Switzerland. Their habitat stretches from Lucerne to the Lake of Constance, and they are identical with the Fools of southern Germany, such as the " Whipping Hanselis " of Baden. Their descent can be traced from the Fools of the celebrated Narrenschiff, a feature of west Germanic Carnival. We know it best by its appearance every few years in the famous Nuremberg Schemenlaufen, where it was seen right through the centuries. In 1823 one was seen at Cologne, and now and then a small ship on wheels can be seen still in Swiss and German villages. With the aid of the annual Schembartbuch costume designs, several books of which are in existence, we can safely claim the descent of Ship and Fools from the procession of the goddess Nerthus or Hertha

(Frau Bertha now). Her ship was carried about the fields up to the twelfth century, to the scandal of the Christian priests. The Schemen-runners were ritualists who chased out Winter

devils, represented as Ogres, dark-clad creatures and dry thorny beings in the design books. The Nuremberg drawings never show the Schemen in any other disguise than that of Fools, and in distinction to the barren Winter Spirits they are covered with leaf designs. So it seems quite safe to say that today's Fools are in direct genealogical descent from the Schemen, who took the name of Ghosts (Schemen is an old word for ghost) because they hunted Spirits. " Ghost-running " is a name

I



130 Collectanea

which can be applied to hunters and hunted with equal truth. This seems to support what I propose in the case of the Klduse and other Runners. To-day's Fools are often covered with

patches and tags of stuff. Then they are the Bldtzli Narronen, the Leafy Fools ; for patches are the best they can do since the

wealthy Guilds, which paid for designs and dresses in the days of the Schemenlaufen, are no more. That the Bldtzli Narronen are connected with Spring and renewed life is proved by Austrian women pulling off their patches to put under the hens. This makes the hens lay. Some Swiss Fools throw bran or sawdust at the crowds, at one town hundreds of loaves of bread are

thrown, many throw fruit, all wear bells, Schellen or Rollen, ugly or smiling masks. So that they link exactly with the Tyro- lese Ugly or Beautiful Perchten, although I have never heard that name given to Frau Bertha's Swiss devotees. At Wallen- stadt I met a Narro with a Christian cross sewn on his pagan back. This recalled the sign of the Cross made by the Monsieur, and again with his foot by the Hobby horse, of the Basque Masquerades. These things seem to be attempts at self-protec- tion by dabblers in heathenish practices. That they know very well their doings are not Christian is shown by certain Styrian Runners, who hide when the church bells ring.

A thoroughly Christian custom is that of the Star Singers, men and boys, who go from house to house on the Eve of

Epiphany, one carrying a large silver paper star on a stick.

They sing appropriate carols with the usual verse for the quote, and often the Three Kings in person go with them. Those we saw in the Festhalle came from Canton Lucerne.

The Grisons made a lovely picture, both in the procession and when they gave a programme of scenes, songs and dances on the great indoor stage. There is something exotic about these

people, a touch of the Mediterranean via the Italian-Swiss Canton Ticino, right into the Alpine heights of the Engadine. The women's dress is chiefly scarlet, thickly pleated. Dangling earrings and coal black hair betray some southern blood, others sun-darkened and dried by cruelly hard work, as mountain women too often are, are truly Alpine in character. The one

Italian-speaking valley of the Grisons sent wonderfully costumed



Collectanea 131

people, who might have come straight from the Ligurian coast, and who contrasted sharply with the yellow-haired Germanic

types from the Rheintal. They brought Knabenschaften with

them, young men's societies, in First Empire uniforms. These

young men march out at Corpus Christi and perform various social duties, though the Kalendes, still called by its ancient Roman name and still celebrated with logs and fires, has come down to younger boys. A hundred years ago these societies were the guardians of the girls, each man selecting his " ward "

by means of a cake of her baking. She had to be watched over, manners, morals and even dress were surveyed. An extreme case of young men hierophants. In the Festhalle we were

shown, beautifully staged and as simply presented as though in their own platz, the election of a new Landamann at the ancient

Landegemeinde. The outgoing official, scarlet-robed, rode on to the stage with the town Scribe, also in scarlet and bearing a

great sword. Aldermen, reminiscent of Andorran Councillors, gathered round, the womenfolk withdrew as became them, and the roll was read. Electors made their voices heard, no one

prevented their climbing the tribune to speak face to face with their headman. Finally the new Landamann was elected, and the scarlet cloak thrown on his shoulders. Drummers in medieval tabards drummed, great banners waved, and the

antique law was read in Romansch, their Alpine-Latin dialect.

Although belonging to the history of the folk rather than to their lore as we employ the word, this scene stands out in the memory as coming from the heart of free and ancient Switzerland.

VIOLET ALFORD



an unknown switzerland

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