Rhaeto-Romance
The baths of Tarasp, to which Willard Fiske was sent for health reasons in the summer of 1891, are in the canton of Graubünden, in eastern Switzerland. This alpine region and adjacent districts in Italy (Trentino-Alto Adige and Friuli-Venezia Giulia) are home to the dialects of Rhaeto-Romanic. To this day, scholars debate the assertion that the dialects spoken in this contiguous region can be effectively defined as one language.
During his sojourn in Tarasp, Fiske walked to Scuol, a nearby village. Seeing Rhaeto-Romanic books by chance in a shop window, he and a friend, Professor Edward Payson Evans of the University of Michigan, became intensely interested in the Rhaeto-Romanic language. Fiske acquired books published in the language throughout the region, and in a few weeks, he had assembled a remarkable collection of some 1200 volumes, which he sent to Cornell.
The Catalogue of the Rhaeto-Romanic Collection enumerates sixteen dialects and sub-dialects of the language. Fiske relied extensively on the Verzeichniss Rätoromanischer Litteratur by Edouard Boehmer (1883), and in some measure on Boehmer’s dialect classification. Modern scholarship suggests three dialectal groupings, based on geography: Romansch, in eastern Switzerland; Ladin, in eastern Trentino-Alto Adige; and Friulian, in Friuli, which has the largest population of Rhaeto-Romance speakers today.
Sacra Bibla (1679)
This Bible is the first book printed in the town of Scuol in the Lower Engadine region of Romansch-speaking Switzerland, and the first Bible printed in the Lower Engadine dialect.
Martyrologium (1718)
Crespin’s Protestant martyrology, here in the Lower Engadine dialect, was originally published in Geneva in 1554.
Leges Criminallas (1760)
Leges Criminallas ... da tuots quarter honorats comüns da nossa laudabla drettüra suot Muntfallun, 1760.
This volume is one of three eighteen-century manuscript law codes in the Rhaeto-Romanic Collection written in the Lower Engadine dialect.
Arithmetica (1766-1767)
Peider P. J. Rascher. Arithmetica, que eis intraguidamaint et art de faer quints, ca. 1766-67.
Written in the Upper Engadine dialect, the manuscript comprises several sections, the last completed “in l’ann 1767 adi 26 Aprili in Zuotz.”
Chanzuns (19th cent.)
Chanzuns. Late 18th or early 19th century.
Aña Gianmarchet Colanj owned this manuscript hymnal. It was written in the Upper Engadine dialect and dated “Pontresina, 1811.”
Proverbi Friulani
The Friulian dialect, prevalent in extreme northeastern Italy, has the largest number of speakers of Rhaeto-Romanic.