Lalaye

The name Lalaye comes from the German and local dialect name "Lach" and from the Latinate patois equivalent "Lela". A range of spelling variants turns up through the centuries. The Germanic name "Lach" is recorded in 1303 and again in 1561. Following the French occupation of Alsace, francophone versions gain currency: La Ley in 1768, Lallay on Cassini's eighteenth century maps, Lalay in 1758 and finally Lalaye. As in the rest of Alsace, periods of German occupation between 1871 and 1918, and again between 1940 and 1944, saw a return to German versions of the name.

The precise age of the village is not known. The first surviving record of it appears in an inventory compiled in 1303 by a notary named Burkhard von Fricke who was working for the powerful Habsburg family. In the middle of the thirteenth century the Habsburgs owned the Albrecht Valley: the notary's task was to inventory the family's rights and revenues in all the villages including "Lach". Subsequently the village passed through several hands, either in absolute possession or else as a fiefdom. Most noteworthy among these proprietors were the Rathsamhausen zum Stein family and, later, the noble Bollwiller family.

Lalaye was one of many Alsatian villages ruined by the Thirty Years' War. After 1648 the French entrusted the Lalaye lands to Choiseul-Meuse. The village was repopulated by migrants from Lorraine who brought their latinate patois with them.

The Roman Catholic community of Lalaye was affiliated to the parish of nearby Villé: it was therefore necessary for citizens to make the four kilometre (two and a half mile) trek to Villé in order to attend Sunday Mass. Later, in 1665, a report on "The Condition of the Parishes" in the Villé lordship mentions the lack of any chapel at Mittelscheer, but indicates the presence of a suitable building at Lalaye (at that time still called Lach) in good condition and dedicated to Saint Dorothy. At the time the Abbess of Andlau enjoyed the tithe while the priest from Villé administered this chapel and celebrated the mass in it.

In 1777 the old chapel was demolished and work began on a church, planned by the architect Christiani and which would be built on the same spot. The church was far larger than the chapel it replaced, which had become necessary because of immigration to the village during the eighteenth century. Between 1720 and 1750 the size of the registered congregation increased from about twenty souls to about fifty. In 1803 a vicar was assigned to Lalaye-Charbes, and from 1810 he was able to reside in a newly constructed presbytery. Lalaye obtained parish status in 1820.

From the nineteenth century Lalaye experienced a major population exodus, primarily due to a lack of work in the valley. Some residents migrated to cities such as Paris while others crossed the Atlantic to the United States or, like the missionary Jean Gaire, to Canada. Often early emigrants were joined subsequently by others from the commune.

Two schools were constructed during the nineteenth century: one at Charbes in 1832 and the other at Lalaye in 1860.

The village was relatively lightly touched by the two great wars of the twentieth century. During the First World War the village lost 17 inhabitants, and 14 during the Second World War.