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The contagious and wild melody of the Ranz des Vaches rose in the square, and soon drew the absorbed and delighted attention of all within hearing which, to say the truth, was little less than all who were within the limits of the town, for, the crowd chiming in with the more regular artists, a, sort of musical enthusiasm seized upon all present who came of Vaud and her valleys.
Large poles twisted with fir branches, stuck thickly around the lake, gave to the waters the becoming Helvetian gloom. And here, beside three cows all bedecked with ribbons, stood the Swiss maidens destined to startle the shades with the Ranz des Vaches.
"What an extraordinary howl," said Cyril, laughing, as the guide whooped back a sort of jodel in answer to a salute from the other side of the valley. "It's very harmonious is it not?" said Violet. "Yes, that's one of the varieties of the Ranz des Vaches," said Kennedy. "And why do they shout at each other in that way?"
However, this irregular tone charms the Swiss, and is one of the peculiarities of their "Ranz des Vaches:" But it is in the national music of the Celtic race that we find the most familiar examples of melody symbolizing character. The purest form of it is undoubtedly the Irish; and who will not bear witness that in its half-laughing and half-sobbing notes we hear the voice of the race?
When they reached the sodded arena, the men commenced milking the cows, the girls set in motion the different processes of the dairy, and the whole united in singing the Ranz des Vaches of the district.
The shrill squeak of the tin whistle had the same comic effect on him as the notes of the Ranz des Vaches have in awakening the tenderness of domestic emotions in the wandering Swiss the national genius is dramatic.
There are fences about all the houses, inclosing ampler and ampler dooryards; the children, which had swarmed in the thriftless and unenlightened purlieus of Dublin, diminish in number and finally disappear; the chickens have vanished; and I hear I hear the pensive music of the horse-car bells, which in some alien land, I am sure, would be as pathetic to me as the Ranz des Vaches to the Swiss or the bagpipes to the Highlander: in the desert, where the traveller seems to hear the familiar bells of his far-off church, this tinkle would haunt the absolute silence, and recall the exile's fancy to Charlesbridge; and perhaps in the mocking mirage he would behold an airy horse-car track, and a phantasmagoric horse-car moving slowly along the edge of the horizon, with spectral passengers closely packed inside and overflowing either platform.
And here, beside three cows all bedecked with ribbons, stood the Swiss maidens destined to startle the shades with the /Ranz des Vaches/. To the left, full upon the sward, which it almost entirely covered, stretched the great Gothic marquee, divided into two grand sections, one for the dancing, one for the dejeune. The day was propitious, not a cloud in the sky.
For a long time many writers spoke of the frequency and intensity of nostalgia among the Swiss. Numerous cases of suicide from this affliction have been noticed among these hardy mountaineers, particularly on hearing the mountain-song of their homes, "Ranz des vaches."
The herdsman is going, For summer has fled! AIR Second Variation of the Ranz des Vaches.
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