Għana Malti Qadim (c.1825), 

Olvin Vella, Midsea Books, 2024

The collection of 24 għanjiet in quatrains that go back to the early 19th century, being published for the first time in a very attractive volume, may not scale the peak of Mount Parnassus but are still charming and delightful in their own way.

These popular poems are found in a series of photographs of a 106-page manuscript called Canzonette in lingua maltese that once belonged to the well-known folklorist Ġużè Cassar Pullicino. The location of the original manuscript is unfortunately unknown.

Olvin Vella has rendered a valuable contribution for a little-known and less-appreciated aspect of Maltese popular literature, especially in his concise informative introduction.

Although the għanjiet are not actually signed, initials written near the titles provide strong indication of the authorship. Vella has therefore concluded that 15 were written by the famous Latinist Giuseppe Zammit Brighella; two by the playwright Luigi Rosato; one by Zammit and Cesare Vassallo who would go to carve a career as a librarian of the Bibliotheca; another is a collaboration between Vassallo and a G.A.M., while the authors of the other five are not indicated.

All three identified authors were still young in years, all being under 30. It seems that at the time, it was quite common for poets to get together to read their works and engage in unprompted poetic exchanges, a form that survives strongly to this day in għana spirtu pront. Vella, however, states that this collection transcribed by Zammit that a good number of these verses may not have come from such an environment at all.

The manuscript Canzonette in lingua maltese. Photo: Midsea Books

The rhymed exchange between Zammit and Vassallo, in the personae of a man and a woman respectively, has all the hallmarks of spirtu pront, but there are also two translations of Italian poems and four religious hymns written for the children who attended the religious instruction classes in the church of Our Lady of Victory in Birkirkara.

Vella analyses the text from linguistic, pronunciation, morphological, syntactic, and lexical points of view.

The poems themselves are presented both in a modern transcription of the original side by side with their rendering in modern Maltese, as well as in copies of the actual pages of the manuscript.

Several of the poems deal with the subject of love and lovers which can probably be explained by the young age of the writers. At 23 years of age, Zammit, who went on to become a priest and such a noted author of verse in Latin that he received an acknowledgement from the pope, was then just starting his legal studies.

Anyway, the date 1825 is a bit problematic as two others were clearly written later.

There are several poems with a humorous touch like Zammit’s “Fuq min għandu jidħol. Wara l-mewt ta’ Wiżu tal-Biskottini” and the continuation by L.R. “Fuq il-ġlied li sar wara l-mewt ta’ Wiżu tal-Biskottini bejn l-eredi tiegħu”.

The only strongly political overt one is Zammit’s Il-Miżerja tal-Gżira ta’ Malta. He writes of being “minn kiefer tirann oppress”, and “Dat-tirann li huwa jgħakksek/sofri mela, o Malta msejkna” but there is hope: “Daka li ma kienx f’mitt sena/Forsi għad jasal f’mument.”