The Counts of Gruyère - Couverture souple

De Koven, Anna

Couverture souple

ISBN 13 : 9798182726610

Editeur : Katrinabooks, 2026

Synopsis

riply woven of the French, German and Italian races, the Swiss nation

discovers in its Romand or French strain another triple weave of Celtic-

Romand-Burgundian descent.

While the high mountainous regions of eastern Switzerland were early scaled

and settled by the Germanic tribes, the western were still earlier inhabited by

the ancient Celtic-Helvetians and then civilized and cultivated by the most

luxurious of Roman colonies. Resisting first and then happily mingling

with their Roman conquerors, the Celtic people were transformed into a

Romand race, similar in speech and origin to the French. In the heart of this

Romand country was an ancient principality where the essential qualities of

the beauty loving and imaginative races, Roman and Celtic, expressed them-

selves uniquely. A fountain of Celtic song and legend, a centre of chivalry

and warlike power, this principality is known only to the outer world by the

pastoral product which bears its name "Gruyere."

Remarkable in the interest of the unbroken line of its valorous and lov-

able princes, and in the precious and enchanting race mixture of its brave,

3 ANNA DE KOVEN

laughter-loving people, its supreme historical interest lies in its little recorded

and astonishing political significance among the independent feudal princi-

palities of Europe.

When the Teuton barbarians came to devastate the enchanting loveliness

of the templed Roman garden which was Switzerland for three idyllic cen-

turies, they stopped at last at the penultimate peaks of the Occidental Alps,

at a certain region called aux fenils (ad fines), where a glacial stream rushes

across the narrow valley of the Griesbach, among the southern mountains

of the Bernese Oberland. Thus western or Romand Switzerland preserves a

character definitely apart from the eastern, and this barrier across the Bernese

valley, unpassed for a thousand years, still divides the German from the Ro-

mand speaking peasantry. To the north and west lies Gruyere, greenest of

pastoral countries, uniquely set in a ring of azure heights, where like a lost

Provence, the Romand spirit has preserved its eternal youthfulness and charm.

Greatly loved by all the Swiss, its annals piously preserved by ancient chroni-

clers, this country is German only in its eastern rocky portion; but where the

castle stands and in all the wide valleys which open towards the setting sun, it

is of purest Romand speech and character. Here ruled for six hundred years

a sovereign line of counts whose history, a pastoral epic, is melodious with

song and legend, and glowing with all the pageantry and chivalry of the mid-

dle ages. Although skirted by the great Roman roads, and flanked by out-

post towers, Gruyere was never romanized, being settled only in its outlying

plains by occasional Gallo-Roman villas, while the interior country, ringed

by a barrier of almost inaccessible mountains, was left to the early

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Katrinabooks
• Date d'édition: 2026
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 13: 9798182726610
• Reliure: Paperback
• Nombre de pages: 94
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible