Two old poems

Abstract

The two poems which follow differ slightly in their nature. The first, 'From the Singing of the People,' is rather a collection of varying numbers of separate, or related, verses: it will be seen that some of them are spoken by a man, others by a woman. Many of these verses might well have had their origin at some function such as Mnarja, the festivities held in the Buskett Gardens on the eve of, and during, the feast of SS. Peter and Paul (29th June). Here, friendly competitions would develop, often spontaneously, between two or more people, each trying to outdo the other in impromptu verse. The second poem, 'The Bride of Mosta,' is a unity, with a narrative theme, and is the more interesting of the two as regards its history. One of the oldest songs there is in Maltese, it was widely known in olden days, but seems gradually to have become less and less widely known. This is one of the hazards in the life of those tales which are preserved by oral means only. Fortunately, before possibly being lost, it was committed to writing and first appeared in 1897 in Archivio Glottologico Italiano by Professor Luigi Bonelli.