Griselidis and printed at Bréhan-Loudéac in 1484, and its popularity is shown by the number of early editions quoted by Brunet (Manuel du libraire, s.v. Petrarca). The story was dramatized in 1395, and a Mystère de Griselidis, marquise de Saluses par personnaiges was printed by Jehan Bonfons (no date). Chaucer followed Petrarch’s version in the Canterbury Tales. Ralph Radcliffe, who flourished under Henry VIII., is said to have written a play on the subject, and the story was dramatized by Thomas Dekker, Henry Chettle and W. Haughton in 1603.
An example of the many ballads of Griselda is given in T. Deloney’s Garland of Good Will (1685), and the 17th-century chap-book, The History of Patient Grisel (1619), was edited by H. B. Wheatley (1885) for the Villon Society with a bibliographical and literary introduction.
GRISI, GIULIA (1811–1869), Italian opera-singer, daughter
of one of Napoleon’s Italian officers, was born in Milan. She
came of a family of musical gifts, her maternal aunt Josephina
Grassini (1773–1850) being a favourite opera-singer both on the
continent and in London; her mother had also been a singer,
and her elder sister Giudetta and her cousin Carlotta were both
exceedingly talented. Giulia was trained to a musical career,
and made her stage début in 1828. Rossini and Bellini both
took an interest in her, and at Milan she was the first Adalgisa
in Bellini’s Norma, in which Pasta took the title-part. Grisi
appeared in Paris in 1832, as Semiramide in Rossini’s opera,
and had a great success; and in 1834 she appeared in London.
Her voice was a brilliant dramatic soprano, and her established
position as a prima donna continued for thirty years. She
was a particularly fine actress, and in London opera her association
with such singers as Lablache, Rubini, Tamburini and Mario
was long remembered as the palmy days of Italian opera. In
1854 she toured with Mario in America. She had married Count
de Melcy in 1836, but this ended in a divorce; and in 1856 she
married Mario (q.v.). She died in Berlin on the 29th of November
1869.
GRISON (Galictis vittata), a carnivorous mammal, of the
family Mustelidae, common in Central and South America and
Mexico. It is about the size of a marten, and has the upper
surface of a bluish-grey tint, and the under surface is dark
brown. The grison lives on small mammals and birds, and in
settled districts is destructive to poultry. Allamand’s grison
(G. allamandi), with the same range, is somewhat larger. Another
member of the genus is the tayra or taira (G. barbara), about as
large as an otter, with a range from Mexico to Argentina. This
species hunts in companies (see Carnivora).
GRISONS (Ger. Graubünden), the most easterly of the Swiss cantons and also the largest in extent, though relatively the
most sparsely populated. Its total area is 2753.2 sq. m., of
which 1634.4 sq. m. are classed as “productive” (forests
covering 503.1 sq. m. and vineyards 1.3 sq. m.), but it has also
138.6 sq. m. of glaciers, ranking in this respect next after the
Valais and before Bern. The whole canton is mountainous, the
principal glacier groups being those of the Tödi, N. (11,887 ft.),
of Medels, S.W. (Piz Medel, 10,509 ft.), of the Rheinwald or the
Adula Alps, S.W. (Rheinwaldhorn, 11,149 ft.), with the chief
source of the Rhine, of the Bernina, S.E. (Piz Bernina, 13,304 ft.),
the most extensive, of the Albula, E. (Piz Kesch, 11,228 ft.),
and of the Silvretta, N.E. (Piz Linard, 11,201 ft.). The principal
valleys are those of the upper Rhine and of the upper Inn (or
Engadine, q.v.). The three main sources of the Rhine are in
the canton. The valley of the Vorder Rhine is called the Bündner
Oberland, that of the Mittel Rhine the Val Medels, and that of
the Hinter Rhine (the principal), in different parts of its course,
the Rheinwald, the Schams valley and the Domleschg valley,
while the upper valley of the Julia is named the Oberhalbstein.
The chief affluents of the Rhine in the canton are the Glenner
(flowing through the Lugnetz valley), the Avers Rhine, the
Albula (swollen by the Julia and the Landwasser), the Plessur
(Schanfigg valley) and the Landquart (coming from the Prättigau).
The Rhine and the Inn flow respectively into the North
and the Black Seas. Of other streams that of Val Mesocco joins
the Ticino and so the Po, while the Maira or Mera (Val Bregaglia)
and the Poschiavino join the Adda, and the Rambach (Münster
valley) the Adige, all four thus ultimately reaching the Adriatic
Sea. The inner valleys are the highest in Central Europe, and
among the loftiest villages are Juf, 6998 ft. (the highest permanently
inhabited village in the Alps), at the head of the Avers
glen, and St Moritz, 6037 ft., in the Upper Engadine. The
lower courses of the various streams are rent by remarkable
gorges, such as the Via Mala, the Rofna, the Schyn, and those
in the Avers, Medels and Lugnetz glens, as well as that of the
Züge in the Landwasser glen. Below Coire, near Malans, good
wine is produced, while in the Val Mesocco, &c., maize and chestnuts
flourish. But the forests and the mountain pasturages are
the chief source of wealth. The lower pastures maintain a fine
breed of cows, while the upper are let out in summer to Bergamasque
shepherds. There are many mineral springs, such as
those of St Moritz, Schuls, Alvaneu, Fideris, Le Prese and San
Bernardino. The climate and vegetation, save on the southern
slope of the Alps, are alpine and severe. But yearly vast numbers
of strangers visit different spots in the canton, especially Davos
(q.v.), Arosa and the Engadine. As yet there are comparatively
few railways. There is one from Maienfeld (continued north
to Constance and north-west to Zürich) to Coire (11 m.), which
sends off a branch line from Landquart, E., past Klosters to
Davos (31 m.). From Coire the line bears west to Reichenau
(6 m.), whence one branch runs S.S.E. beneath the Albula Pass
to St Moritz (50 m.), and another S.W. up the Hinter Rhine
valley to Ilanz (2012 m.). There are, however, a number of fine
carriage roads across the passes leading to or towards Italy.
Besides those leading to the Engadine may be noted the roads
from Ilanz past Disentis over the Oberalp Pass (6719 ft.) to
Andermatt, from Disentis over the Lukmanier Pass (6289 ft.) to
Biasca, on the St Gotthard railway, from Reichenau past
Thusis and Splügen over the San Bernardino Pass (6769 ft.) to
Bellinzona on the same railway line, and from Splügen over the
Splügen Pass (6946 ft.) to Chiavenna. The Septimer Pass (7582 ft.)
from the Julier route to the Maloja route has now only a mule
path, but was probably known in Roman times (as was possibly
the Splügen), and was much frequented in the middle ages.
The population of the canton in 1900 was 104,520. Of this number 55,155 (mainly near Coire and Davos, in the Prättigau and in the Schanfigg valley) were Protestants, while 49,142 (mainly in the Bündner Oberland, the Val Mesocco and the Oberhalbstein) were Romanists, while there were also 114 Jews (81 of whom lived in Davos). In point of language 48,762 (mainly near Coire and Davos, in the Prättigau and in the Schanfigg valley) were German-speaking, while 17,539 (mostly in the Val Mesocco, the Val Bregaglia and the valley of Poschiavo, but including a number of Italian labourers engaged on the construction of the Albula railway) were Italian-speaking. But the characteristic tongue of the Grisons is a survival of an ancient Romance language (the lingua rustica of the Roman Empire), which has lagged behind its sisters. It has a scanty printed literature, but is still widely spoken, so that, of the 38,651 persons in the Swiss Confederation who speak it, no fewer than 36,472 are in the Grisons. It is distinguished into two dialects: the Romonsch (sometimes wrongly called Romansch), which prevails in the Bündner Oberland and in the Hinter Rhine valley (Schams and Domleschg), and the Ladin (closely related to the tongue spoken in parts of the South Tyrol), that survives in the Engadine and in the neighbouring valleys of Bergün, Oberhalbstein and Münster. (See F. Rausch’s Geschichte der Literatur des rhaeto-romanischen Volkes, Frankfort, 1870, and Mr Coolidge’s bibliography of this language, given on pp. 22-23 of Lorria and Martel’s Le Massif de la Bernina, Zürich, 1894.) Yet in the midst of this Romance-speaking population are islets (mostly, if not entirely, due to immigration in the 13th century from the German-speaking Upper Valais) of German-speaking inhabitants, so in the Vals and Safien glens, and at Obersaxen (all in the Bündner Oberland), in the Rheinwald (the highest part of the Hinter Rhine valley), and in the Avers glen (middle reach of the Hinter Rhine valley), as well as in and around Davos itself.
There is not much industrial activity in the Grisons. A
