And So
Difficult Is Their Language With Any Of These Alphabets That Even After
A Five Days' Residence On The Spot I Still Find Myself Puzzled By Such
Simple Passages As This:
. . . Zilji,
mosse vet, ce asso mbremie
to ngcnrct me iljis, praa
gjith e miegculem, mhi siaarr
rriij i sgjuat.
Nje voogh e keljbur
sorrevet te liosta
ndjej se i oxtenej
e pisseroghej. Zuu shiu
menes; ne mee se Ijinaar
chish Ijeen pa-shuatur
skiotta, e i ducheje per moon.
I will only add that the translation of such a passage - it contains
twenty-eight accents which I have omitted - is mere child's play to its
pronunciation.
XXIV
AN ALBANIAN SEER
Sometimes I find my way to the village of Macchia, distant about three
miles from San Demetrio. It is a dilapidated but picturesque cluster of
houses, situate on a projecting tongue of land which is terminated by a
little chapel to Saint Elias, the old sun-god Helios, lover of peaks and
promontories, whom in his Christian shape the rude Albanian colonists
brought hither from their fatherland, even as, centuries before, he had
accompanied the Byzantines on the same voyage and, fifteen centuries yet
earlier, the Greeks.
At Macchia was born, in 1814, of an old and relatively wealthy family,
Girolamo de Rada, [Footnote: Thus his friend and compatriot, Dr. Michele
Marchiano, spells the name in a biography which I recommend to those who
think there is no intellectual movement in South Italy. But he himself,
at the very close of his life, in 1902, signs himself Ger. de Rhada. So
this village of Macchia is spelt indifferently by Albanians as Maki or
Makji. They have a fine Elizabethan contempt for orthography - as well
they may have, with their thirty alphabets.] a flame-like patriot in
whom the tempestuous aspirations of modern Albania took shape. The ideal
pursued during his long life was the regeneration of his country; and if
the attention of international congresses and linguists and folklorists
is now drawn to this little corner of the earth - if, in 1902,
twenty-one newspapers were devoted to the Albanian cause (eighteen in
Italy alone, and one even in London) - it was wholly his merit.
He was the son of a Greco-Catholic priest. After a stern religious
upbringing under the paternal roof at Macchia and in the college of San
Demetrio, he was sent to Naples to complete his education. It is
characteristic of the man that even in the heyday of youth he cared
little for modern literature and speculations and all that makes for
exact knowledge, and that he fled from his Latin teacher, the celebrated
Puoti, on account of his somewhat exclusive love of grammatical rules.
None the less, though con-genitally averse to the materialistic and
subversive theories that were then seething in Naples, he became
entangled in the anti-Bourbon movements of the late thirties, and
narrowly avoided the death-penalty which struck down some of his
comrades. At other times his natural piety laid him open to the
accusation of reactionary monarchical leanings.
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