The Minorcan Language, The Dialect Of
Mahon, _El Mahones_, As They Call It, Is Spoken By More Than Half Of The
Inhabitants Who Remained Here When The Country Was Ceded To The United
States, And All Of Them, I Believe, Speak Spanish Besides.
Their children,
however, are growing up in disuse of these languages, and in another
generation the last traces of the majestic speech of Castile, will have
been effaced from a country which the Spaniards held for more than two
hundred years.
Some old customs which the Minorcans brought with them from their native
country are still kept up. On the evening before Easter Sunday, about
eleven o'clock, I heard the sound of a serenade in the streets. Going out,
I found a party of young men, with instruments of music, grouped about the
window of one of the dwellings, singing a hymn in honor of the Virgin in
the Mahonese dialect. They began, as I was told, with tapping on the
shutter. An answering knock within had told them that their visit was
welcome, and they immediately began the serenade. If no reply had been
heard they would have passed on to another dwelling. I give the hymn as it
was kindly taken down for me in writing by a native of St. Augustine. I
presume this is the first time that it has been put in print, but I fear
the copy has several corruptions, occasioned by the unskillfulness of the
copyist. The letter _e_, which I have put in italics, represents the
guttural French _e_, or perhaps more nearly the sound of _u_ in the word
but.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 100 of 396
Words from 26906 to 27177
of 107287
