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Translated from French with the help of AI; the French text prevails.

Lyôba

Lyôba

Gruyère patois

Said in Gruyères

The call to the cows in the Ranz des vaches

Gruyères

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Where it comes from

Lyôba is the call that opens the refrain of the Ranz des vaches, the herdsmen’s song of the Gruyère. The herdsman calls his herd to milking, “Lyôba, lyôba, por aryâ”, lyôba, for milking, then calls all his beasts, of every colour and every age. According to the Glossaire des patois de la Suisse romande, lyôba names both the cow and the cry that calls her. The Glossaire derives a verb from it, which French Wikipedia spells alyôbâ: to gather the cattle with these calls, for milking, for the pasture, the chalet or the alpine meadow.

The word has a cousin on the other side of the language border. According to the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland, people sang “Har Chueli, ho Lobe” on the pastures to bring the herd back towards the byre; in German-speaking Switzerland cows are sometimes called Lobe. For German Wikipedia, this Lobe belongs both to the Alemannic and to the Romance dialects of the Alps; in places people still say Loobe or Loobeli, and Richard Weiss, in his Volkskunde der Schweiz, took the word to be older than the Indo-European languages. That is a hypothesis, reported second-hand; the sources consulted go no further.

According to the State of Fribourg, the Gruyère version of the song came out in 1813, with the patois text and its translation. Today barely one inhabitant of the canton in a hundred still understands Gruyère patois, yet the Ranz serves there as an anthem, and a whole room joins in the refrain.

In use

Rather than invent patois, here is the line of the refrain as the State of Fribourg publishes it, then another made of its words:

  • “Lyôba, lyôba, por aryâ !” – Lyôba, lyôba, for milking!
  • “Vinyidè totè, lyôba !” – Come, all of you, lyôba!

Sources: State of Fribourg, “Ranz des vaches”, and the text of the song (transcription by Albert Bovigny); Glossaire des patois de la Suisse romande (volume I, p. 321; volume II, pp. 28 and 435; volume IX, p. 170); Historical Dictionary of Switzerland, “Ranz des vaches” (Max Peter Baumann); French Wikipedia, “Ranz des vaches”; German Wikipedia, “Kuhreihen”.