A Swiss Farming Village

IT is the season of the fall ploughing, the apple gathering, the potato harvest. The sun has smiled upon these occupations, shining all day long on the open upland plateau, which inclines one long side toward the east, catching the slant morning rays from across the Alps, and tilts slightly upward to meet the western sky and the descending rose of sunset, — shining upon the fields and scattered farms, and on the cluster of houses round a little church spire which stands for the village of Zimmerwald. September has passed gently into October, the autumn days succeeding each other, alike and yet distinct, each with its peculiar stamp of loveliness; complete, tranquil days such as that in our Indian summer of which Emerson wrote, “ To have lived through all its sunny hours seems longevity enough.” Yet the length of our October days is measured for us by their entire homogeneousness, and it is rather the varied charm of the hours which gives one a sense, in this Swiss autumn weather, of living from season to season between two twilight pages. The dewy morning, the sunburnt afternoon, the solemn, rich-toned evening, are worlds apart from each other, and speak to different ages of the imagination. The mountains have moods too many to mention. We walk every morning along a little winding path that passes through the garden, where a fountain splashes unobtrusively, and roses bloom in profusion side by side with high-ruffed dahlias, through the orchard, and past a straggling hedge of lilac bushes to the open fields. There, across the ploughed acres, beyond a stretch of vale and rolling country, tufted here and there with forest, rise the Alps, a row of shining ones ; the Jungfrau in the centre with her attendant peaks, to the right the broad snow shoulders of the Blümlisalp thrown into dazzling whiteness by the intervening velvet slope of the Niesen. Masses of shadow lie in their hollows, softened by distance, and vivified by the morning freshness to a luminous, pale azure ; their snows glisten in the sunlight; and clear-edged, unclouded, yet indescribably blended with faint sky and glittering vapors, they are a vision of light and blue too glorious for steady contemplation, seeming the Prospero creation of a moment, evoked, yet scarce embodied. The Lake of Thun lies at their feet, a little brush stroke of gray, sometimes concealed under a lake of white mist, and waves of lower Alps roll away on either side to a far horizon. The drawback to snow mountains is their apparent negation of the homely truths which the old earth has been so long toiling to amass. They would contradict all the rest of the landscape in their utter brilliancy if the sun were not so alert, striking fire from dew and ploughshare, and lending a joy to common verdure and brown hillside. The air is fresh without coolness, alive with the ringing of cowbells and the stir of birds. Sparrows flutter noisily in the hedge ; starlings fly in flocks, swoop down upon the field, and are suddenly off again, shedding the light from their plumage in silver reflections like a shoal of little fishes lifted wet and shining out of the water. A fortnight ago the field was newly ploughed, a blue steam rising from its umber furrows ; to-day the winter wheat stands three inches high, in slender blades, each bearing aloft its little globe of dew ; the brown clods are half hidden beneath a diaphanous green.

The landscape is seldom without figures. Young and old of both sexes have their part in the work that is going forward. In the wet grass of the orchard, sturdy flaxen-haired children are picking up the apples fallen overnight. There are apples russet and golden; apples which bloom like red roses on the tree, and others small and pear-shaped, of a dark wine color, which we took for plums, at first sight. A triangular heap of these dark red apples is piled upon the grass, against the barn wall, beside another heap, golden-green in hue, making a pleasant little nature morte happily framed in living nature. Smaller piles of apples clasp the rough tree trunks, button pears and purple plums lie on the ground, and tiny white daisies stand primly in the grass, blushing underneath. An old woman is knocking down nuts from a tree with a pole, under which she staggers a little, and well may. The cheerful sound of flails comes from the barn, but will not last long, for the threshing at this season is only for immediate necessity, the bulk of it being left for winter work. The fullest activity of Zimmerwald in these October days is to be found in the potato fields. There whole families, sometimes it would seem half the small commune, are at work together. A couple of men go ahead with the plough, turning up a long furrow, sometimes passing out of sight with every turn in following the roll of the ground. Women of all ages, old men, and small boys stand by the furrow, ready, so soon as the plough has passed, to hoe up the potatoes with their pioches, and later to collect them in flat, curved baskets, which are emptied into a cart. The young fellow at the horse’s head cracks his whip proudly, with loud reports which seldom fail to awaken a response like a pistol shot from another potato patch. There is a regular rivalry among the youth of the country in this exercise ; the vigor of the strokes is noted by the line of workers in the furrow, who comment thereon as the plough passes, and the least successful of the competitors runs a gauntlet of jokes from the girls, and of experienced criticism from the old men who remember that they also were valiant whip - crackers in their youth. At nine o’clock they quit work, and sit in a row on the ground to partake of the repast called from its hour s’nüni, consisting of bread, with coffee brought hot from the farmhouse, and wine or schnapps. At eleven they go home to dinner, and at four in the afternoon comes another outdoor repast, s’vierli. These are great gossip hours, to judge by the laughter going on, and by the wagging of tongues in the indescribable Bernese dialect, — a language which is crunched hard between the teeth, and gains but little amelioration from the admixture of French words.

They are a well-to-do race, on the whole, these peasants of the canton of Berne, sturdy and strong of aspect; but they have the reputation of being a little hard and close-fisted, and it must be acknowledged that prosperity has not lent them charm any more than the merci, often followed by vielmal, has imparted grace to their speech. On Sunday the men walk among their acres like lords of the soil, with a rolling holiday gait, point-device in their attire, their immaculate shirt sleeves of a fullness suggestive of episcopal dignity. The beautiful peasant dress of the women appears in its completeness only on Sunday, — the sleeves a marvel of starching, the velvet bodice caught with silver chains and edelweiss. The people cling to their customs as to their dialect and costume; they cannot be said to be spoiled by contact with the purse of the tourist, as is sometimes the case with the Swiss peasantry, for Zimmerwald is not yet a popular resort; nor are they tainted by city notions, for some of them have never so much as seen Berne, which is within two hours’ walk. The local spirit is strongly conservative. The youth in one Bernese commune who would court a girl of another district meets with a rude reception from her fellow-villagers, who consider their claims to her favor not only primary, but absolute. Landed property descends not to the eldest, but to the youngest son, saddled, however, with obligations which constitute an indemnity. Unfortunately, too, even in this region of stately, fertile farms mortgages are not unknown, and usury takes its tithe as elsewhere. Drunkenness is found here to a degree unknown in other cantons, the tax on wine, which is not a Bernese product, having led to the distillation of brandy by the farmers. Recently, however, the government has taken the distillation of spirits into its own hands. There are customs surviving in the canton which, framed in an age of less moral sensitiveness than our own, leave much to be desired in the matter of delicacy. But to judge fairly of such things one would need to have a knowledge of the language, and a closer acquaintance with the country than can be gained by the passing tourist. We can see the Bernese peasant better in the novels of Jeremias Gotthelf than with our own eyes. Even industrial occupations and agricultural methods are not to be gauged by standards brought across the water. Again and again my New England partiality has welcomed some familiar trait in this Swiss farming scene, but beside the resemblance stands a difference of larger proportions, rendering comparison impossible. The tourist from Illinois has counted fifteen hands at work in one potato patch, “ and at home,” he declares, “ seven men could farm hundreds of acres.” It is true that Switzerland is supplied with a surplus of laborers for the harvest, which a large emigration has as yet only partially reduced, but it would be a hasty inference to conclude therefrom that the labor is unproductive, or that the habit of flocking to the field is a mere festivity. The Swiss farmer has his own resources to work with, his own traditions to follow, his own ends to meet. He is dealing not only with a mountainous country, but with a soil which even in the most fertile regions would have been exhausted long ago without careful planting and lavish use of fertilizers, a soil of which every inch must be made to yield its utmost. American machines have been introduced in a measure into Switzerland; but the chief working power used by the peasant is still the strong arm of his family ; his special pride, the ornament of his front yard, his friend from year to year, is still his fumier. The Zimmerwald peasant can point to an imposing fumier, arranged in layers, with the straw co quettishly rolled at the sides. It stands proudly by the roadside, testifying, like the trim stacks of firewood along the house wall, to possession, order, and industry. The house itself combines picturesqueness with well being in a high degree. It looks enormous, and deducting the barn, which is under the same roof, and allowing for a six or seven foot projection of the said roof, is still of comfortable proportions.

They are quaint structures, these homes for man and beast, solidly built, sometimes of stucco with wooden beams, oftener of wood, which time and weather enrich to soft shades of tan and sepia, harmonizing with the vast expanse of blackened roof, high - pitched and covered with tiny shingles. The roof is of all ages, like a well-patched sail; the shingles, frayed and shredded till they resemble thatch, being renovated in places, or replaced by red tiles, which in time will spread over the whole domicile. It is a question of time and economy, however, to renew the whole head-gear of so large an establishment, the entire length of some of these peasant houses being not less than one hundred and fifty or two hundred feet. The roof is brought forward at one end in a gable, with beams crossed underneath, or with a curious boxlike structure, fitting into the steep gable above and forming a round arch below. The garret is furnished with hay, visible through an open space just under the eaves ; the two lower stories show rows of shining windows with tiny round panes, each window sill adorned with geraniums and other flowering plants in pots, and the effect is as cheerful as a page of a Christmas picture book. Here are the livingrooms, clean and well kept within, with massive furniture, often beautifully carved, though the bricabrac hunter has wrought many a ravage, of late years, among the relics of Swiss peasant households.

Between the house and the barn are two thick walls inclosing a passageway, with doors at either end. Our best New England barns are not more generous in size, better built or better equipped, than these great barns in the canton of Berne. The lower floor is divided into stables : some with walls of stones, others finished in wood, for greater warmth in winter. One apartment is for the horses, which are a large and sturdy race ; another is for the cows, a row of sleek, beautiful creatures, each furnished with a bell only a degree smaller than that hung in the steeple of a New England village church. Other rooms are used for storage and for various occupations, and there is a workshop, where the wear and tear of tools is made good, and the big wooden hay shovels, pitchforks, and curious little carts are turned out new. A turfed road, slanting upward from the field at the back, leads into the great barn door between the well-stacked haylofts, which, as before mentioned, extend over the house, and are aired and liglited from all sides through an open space a foot or two in depth under the eaves. Here, were it still summer, one could feel one’s self at home, and court the companionship of the grasshopper in the hay, who is as friendly a personage, to my mind, as the cricket on the hearth.

But the beautiful autumn weather will have us all day out-of-doors. Early in the afternoon the Jungfrau puts on its croix federate, the shadows of a deep hollow in its breast and of an opposite mountain meeting in a perfect cross, dark upon the brilliant snow. The sun has shifted to the westward of the high plateau, round which he seems to make a special revolution as round a little world, and the shadow lengthens in the yellowing grass. As the afternoon advances, a sort of tan spreads over the landscape. The woods glow with crimson and golden lines which blend in a rich auburn; they are less audacious in color than our New England woods, but more harmonious. Little feathers of smoke curl upward here and there from the fields where they are burning the potato vines, and a larger smoke plume ascends from an unroofed oven of stone, over which some women are drying hemp, while others are beating it with a rapid, cheerful noise, which comes pleasantly to our ears across the fields. At dusk these women go home looking like corn shocks set in motion, with the hemp hanging in stiff, dun drapery from their broad shoulders. On all sides are pictures which seem to come fresh from the hand of Breton or Millet; for that poetry which is everywhere in the contact of soil and effort enfolds even our prosperous Zimmerwald peasantry, who, little as they know it, are already on canvas painted at Barbizon and in the Pas - de - Calais. In the green of the meadows — a soft, indefinite green which takes on beautiful tones at dusk — a slim girl, with skirts looped about her waist, is mowing, following in the wake of two stalwart men, laying the swaths quickly and evenly before her; then pausing — a sculpturesque figure in the gathering gloom — to whet her scythe. The haymaking was over long ago; these thick, soft swaths are for ensilage, to keep their sweetness all winter in underground furrows. Farther on, between the earth twilight and the sunset sky, a man and woman are hoeing potatoes with their heavy, deep-bladed pioches, dusky silhouettes in motion against the opal light; giving their whole strength and care to a struggle with the difficult dark element below, while bathed unconsciously in the peace and radiance above. There is no Angelus to check their labors, for we are in a Protestant country, and they go on without pause into the deepening of the evening.

Who can tell of the charm of these Swiss autumn evenings ! After the sun has gone below the saffron horizon, and the blue has become purple on the slopes of the Jura, the Alps begin to light their fires: the federal cross lies on a field of flame color; peak after peak lights up in the wonderful Alpine glow, which burns for a little while, then slowly fades, till the long snow range is left pale against a sky in which the glow is just beginning. But wait till it has faded from the sky, which is chilled to steel; then the mountains have their turn again. This time they are rose, not flame ; standing in cameo relief against the cold, receding blue, they hold their soft rose tint longer than the red, and lose it by more imperceptible degrees, passing through shades of pearl and violet to an austere whiteness, like an armor of stern courage put on against the coming of the darkness. For a week this capricious fire of the snows had shone for us as regularly as the planets. At last came an afternoon when the aspect of things began to change. The sky became slowly overcast ; white cloud wings unfolded above the Jura, and remained Stationary for hours ; clouds thickened in the west, and moved in gray masses overhead. The mountains were still clear, but we looked for no afterglow from behind the curtain which hid from us the sinking of the sun. But all at once the ranges of lower Alps, rising in successive terraces to the southward, caught a light which burned in a crimson spot on each brown summit, like the glow of warm blood in a sunburnt cheek; their highest and most eastern point, the Niesen, flushed darkly against the pale snow of the Blümlisalp. The valley showed that struggle between light and shadow which we see in the passing of a storm, but the mountains stood aloof for a time, white and indifferent. Then the Blümlisalp began to redden ; the color mounted slowly up its snowy mouldings and crevasses, till they lay bathed in a soft, vivid carmine, which crept on to the Breithorn, touched the breast of the Jungfrau and the slender needle of the Finsteraarhorn, leaving untouched snows beyond and all about its capricious course. A ring of clouds in the upper sky caught the same flush, and the effect was indescribably strange and tender, — the rose ring on the gloom above, the garland of white and carmine gemming the dusky horizon.

Another gift of the light to our eyes, on an evening when the mountains were veiled, was the suffusion of the whole country below us in deep rose color ; fields, villages, and autumn copses being painted for the hour in the most artistic and delicious of hues. The charm of these autumn evenings is not wholly dependent upon the aspect of the Alps. The atmosphere is heavy with dew, which seems to give it a peculiar substance and richness, blending the violet of the sky with the darkening purple of ploughed fields, the evening green of the grass, and the velvet blackness of the pine woods on the upper slopes. A number of rustic sounds intensify the stillness,— the large cowbells ringing on the hillside, the occasional crack of a whip in a field where the plough is tracing a darker furrow, the voices on the road where the carts are wending homeward, some laden with potatoes, others with milk-buckets. Only the largest vehicles are drawn by horses or cattle ; the motive power of the numerous little carts is generally human, but often consists in the German combination of a woman and a dog, or a boy and a dog, who tug different ways in friendly yoke-fellowship. Greetings are always exchanged, the most common being Grüsse, or Grüss Gott, and Guten Abend, with the a prolonged beyond the amen of a chant. We respond to these friendly advances with as close an imitation of their sound as we can attain to with foreign organs; and, walking homeward amid a light in which the influence of the yellow moon above the treetops is blended with the western rose, we see the upland fields of Zimmerwald and the little spire-tipped village, after the busy, sun-steeped day, gathered safely and graciously into the large, tender darkness.

Sophia Kirk.