Böögg
Zurich German
Said in Zurich
The winter effigy burnt at Sechseläuten
Böögg
Where it comes from
Every spring, Zurich sets fire to a big snowman of white jute, stuffed with wood wool and fireworks, perched on top of a woodpile some ten metres high: that is the Böögg. The festival is called Sechseläuten, in Zurich German Sächsilüüte, “ringing six”: in 1525 the city council decided that after the spring equinox the evening bell would mark the end of the working day at six instead of five. So the pyre is lit at 6 pm, on the sixth stroke of the bell of St. Peter’s, and custom has it that the sooner the head bursts, the finer the summer will be.
The name is much older than the festival. According to the Schweizerisches Idiotikon, the great dictionary of Swiss German, a Böögg was, all over German-speaking Switzerland, a masked figure who begged at carnival time, frightened children and made trouble in the streets. The authorities were wary of it: as early as 1417, Lucerne banned going about the carnival dressed as a Böögg. In Zurich, boys carried straw dolls standing for winter around their neighbourhood, then burnt them; in the 19th century the guilds took the matter over. Since 1902 the Böögg has burnt on the square that now bears the festival’s name.
Where the word itself comes from, nobody knows. The Idiotikon sets it beside the English bogy, which also names a thing to be afraid of, without being able to say whether the two are related. It is close to sure, though, that this Böögg is related to another: in Alemannic the same word means a piece of dried snot. The frightening and the disgusting would be two sides of one idea.
In use
On the day of the festival, the whole city keeps an eye on the clock:
- “Hüt am sächsi wird de Böögg verbrännt.” – Today at six, the Böögg gets burnt.
- “Wie lang häts duuret, bis de Chopf explodiert isch?” – How long did it take for the head to explode?
Sources: Schweizerisches Idiotikon, “Der Sechseläutenböögg und andere Bööggen” (Christoph Landolt, 2014); German Wikipedia, “Böögg” and “Sechseläuten”; French Wikipedia, “Sechseläuten”.