WISCONSIN: 101 Years of Yodeling

There is no mountain worthy of the name within hundreds of miles, but the townsfolk of New Glarus, Wis. (pop. 1,068) like to get out and yodel. They also blow ten-foot Alphorns made from fir logs, build houses with high roofs typical of the Swiss Alps, talk a Schweizer-deutsch patois, hang sweet-chiming Swiss bells around the necks of their innumerable brown Swiss cows, and produce vast quantities of Swiss cheese and Swiss lace.

Last week they knocked off work, got happily into velvet jackets or laced bodices and flowing skirts, tapped 300 kegs and 2,500 cases of beer and had a celebration even bigger than their annual Wilhelm Tell festival. The occasion: the town’s 100th anniversary fete.

Spare rooms were made ready, Swiss dishes cooked for thousands of American-Swiss visitors. For four days there were parades, fireworks, community singing and a great tooting of Alphorns. Climax of the celebration was a vast, open-air pageant in which some 120 townspeople took part. It dramatized New Glarus’ 101-year history (the centennial was postponed because of the war), and told many a non-Swiss spectator a lot about Swiss tenacity, stubbornness and good humor.

Patois & Progress. The town had its beginning when the elders of Canton Glarus, Switzerland, decided their alpine valleys were too crowded, decreed that some of their people should found a colony in the U.S. The 27 selected families went to Wisconsin. They tried wheat farming, failed and turned to dairying. By 1861, when they sent their sons off to war, most people of New Glarus spoke English, were prosperous, voted in national elections. At this point the young folk should have started heading West, and New Glarus, having survived, should have forgotten all about Switzerland.

But the sons came back, married Swiss girls, toiled thriftily, and went right on preserving the customs of Canton Glarus which they had never seen. So did their sons and daughters. By now, for all practical purposes, New Glarus is completely Americanized. Its people have more automobiles, iceboxes, radios, pianos, lipsticks and nylons than most U.S. farmers. They are deep in politics (many were diehard supporters of Senator Bob La Follette see Political Notes). Their sons and daughters go to U.S. colleges. Even the big, costumed pageant had a U.S. setting: it was held on the high-school football field. But New Glarus clung to its transplanted Swiss culture harder than ever.

Soldiers from New Glarus who visited Switzerland during World War II came home with some startling news: nobody seemed to yodel there any more. They also told their elders that the Swiss had been astonished by their talk; in 1946 New Glarus was still using phrases almost as dated as Elizabethan English.

The townspeople were unabashed. As a prelude to last week’s pageant four members of the Fraunfelder family yodeled for a half-hour straight. The costumed crowd whispered appreciatively in its ancient patois, enjoyed every minute of it.