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.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 281 of 488
Words from 75337 to 75596 of 131203