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typical for its time and place. We do not have much detailed information to go on - but Bräker probably never thought that his writings might still be read after two centuries and in a different country. Information about the daily life of the Toggenburg in the 18 th century in general does not seem to be very plentiful, all the sources to which I have had access quote mainly from Ebel, and also from Johann Jakob Simmler, pastor of Henau, Niederglatt and various smaller places. In 1785 he presented a report on part of the Toggenburg (Wattwil was included) to the Ascetic Society of Zürich, a society of Protestant pastors which had requested all its members to report on their regions as part of a review of pastoral services. (In the rest of this introduction all quotations are from Voellmy's essay "Die Umwelt", in his edition of Bräker's works, v 2 pp 18-134, unless otherwise stated.)

Simmler says that the inhabitants of the Toggenburg lived mainly on oatmeal together with vegetables: potatoes, turnips, beans and cabbage, also milk and whey. The everyday drink was water. Meat and cider appeared only on special occasions such as church festivals and harvest suppers. Even the better-off people were very frugal with food: Simmler claimed to have seen, during such a festival, one and a half pounds of meat divided between five people. Voellmy also [v 2 p 116] quotes Bräker, speaking through a character in one of his dialogues, a woman whose husband has left her. She calculates what she will need to live on: meal, porridge-meal, bread, coffee, milk, butter, fuel, salt, soap and clothing. Coffee would have been considered a luxury, though it was cheaper than tea on the Continent, in Britain tea was cheaper. Bread was also expensive because grain had to be imported. There is no mention of sugar; Bräker had certainly heard of it because he uses such turns of phrase as "sugar-sweet", but if it was not available honey would be used instead. Fruit was grown, and Braun [ch.3] mentions dried fruit as part of the peasant diet, but much fruit was made into drinks such as cider and cherry-brandy. Coxe [letter 30] quotes one of his guides, who came from another mountain area in Canton Uri, as saying that his family would lay in stores for the eight months of winter as follows: (this is interesting because he gives the quantities thought sufficient for seven people) seven 25-pound cheeses, 108 pounds of bread, about 1000 pounds of potatoes, seven goats and three cows, one of the cows being killed for meat. The cows were fed on hay and the goats on fir-branches, if the hay ran out the cows got fir as well. Coxe also mentions [v 1 p 334] the eating of boiled marmot.

Nor was a great deal of money spent on everyday clothing. Braun says [ch. 3] that farmers took pride in looking less rich than they were. Young children went barefoot, older children wore shoes and stockings only on Sundays, even adults went barefoot most of the year "and walk over the stubble as if it were a floor in the house" [Simmler]. Voellmy says that the "patriarchal family" no longer existed in the Toggenburg, by which he means that farming was always combined with other ways of earning money. Most households, however, grew vegetables for their own use and kept a few animals: a milch cow, a few goats and pigs. Bräker's writings suggest that probably most of the everyday clothing and at least some of the furniture in their homes, were produced by the farmers at home. In December 1795 he writes that some farmers need only to buy salt. One should bear in mind, however, that in some families so much time was spent on outwork for the textile industry that even basic foodstuffs and household goods might be bought rather than grown or made.

Contemporary writers on the Toggenburg accuse its inhabitants of extravagance in respect of "best" clothes and jewellery. Ebel says that girls tried to become independent of their families as soon as they could, "so as to fritter away the gains of their spinning in vain finery". Simmler too says that much money was spent on new dresses, silver or even gold ornaments, ivory hairpins, heavy ornamental neckchains, and several rings for each hand, even if underclothing was worn and patched. Young men, too, spent plenty of money on non-essentials such as drinking in taverns, where each had to have a girl with him "or nothing will taste right, not bread nor wine nor Appenzeller cheese". Part of the objection to spending of this kind was that much of it was going on imported goods. Giezendanner is quoted by Voellmy as saying that people should wear clothing made in Switzerland, and not ape foreign fashions.

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