German/Maltese Folk Song Texts - Hans Stumme and Bertha Ilg (1909)

The International Folk Narrative Conference and International Malta Storytelling Festival

The Department of Maltese, Malta University Junior College, in collaboration several other institutions is organizing in Malta the first International Folk Narrative Conference on ‘The Wise Fool in Narrative Cultures’ (7-10 December) and the first International Malta Storytelling Festival (11-13 December) with the participation of international storytellers. The other collaborating institutions are:

• The Enzyklopädie des Märchens at the Academy of Sciences, Göttingen, Germany,

• The Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Malta,

• The Austrian Embassy in Malta,

• The Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Malta and

• The European Commission Representation in Malta

As reported in this newspaper in the 21 July 2010 issue, Malta has been chosen because of its geographical position, and for this reason, there is no place in Europe better than Malta for the holding of such a conference.

However, there are other reasons for choosing Malta as a particular international venue, which are as follows:

The years 2006 and 2007 marked the centenary of the beginning of the scientific study of the Maltese folk narrative:

• The centenary of the first publication of Maltese folktales and other narratives by Prof. Luigi Bonelli of the Istituto Universitario Orientale of Naples,

• Prof. Hans Stumme of the University of Leipzig and Bertha Ilg;

• The centenary of the death of Jesuit Manwel Magri (1851-1907), the father of Maltese folklore scholarship and the person who collected the largest number of texts in Maltese;

• The 90th anniversary of the death of Rev. Xand Cortis (1857-1917) of Dingli, another Maltese scholar who collected over 80 anecdotes, a good number of which focus on wise fools, and

• The fortieth anniversary of the last publication of Maltese folktale texts.

Definition of Folklore

Benjamin A. Botkin (1938) defined Folklore as a body of traditional belief, custom, and expression, handed down largely by word of mouth and circulating chiefly outside of commercial and academic means of communication and instruction.

Every group is bound together by common interests and purposes, whether educated or uneducated, rural or urban, and possesses a body of traditions which may be called its folklore. Into these traditions enter many elements, individual popular and even “literary,” but all are absorbed and assimilated through repetition and variation into a pattern which has value and continuity for the group as a whole.

Folklore Research in Malta

In his 1947 Article “Folklore Research in Malta”, Joseph Cassar Pullicino, considered as the ultimate student of Maltese folklore this century rightly put forward his assertion that:

“The study of folklore in Malta was sadly neglected in the past because its importance as a science was greatly underestimated with the results that invaluable material that could have been preserved has now been lost to us. Besides up to comparatively recent years, there was a foreign-inspired aversion among the educated classes to the Maltese language, in which many folk beliefs, stories and sayings are enshrined. This explains why, with a few notable exceptions, we owe the systematic collections of Maltese folklore to foreign scholars.

In his book “Studies in Maltese Folklore”, Joseph Cassar Pullicino also writes:

“Maltese Folklore preserves the soul of the past, embodying the ways of thought, the mode of life and the moral code of preceding centuries. This national heritage of lore and traditions, the product of simple, psychological reaction to the historical environments and to the various culture-contacts which our people have experienced in the past”.

Maltese Folk Song (Għana)

According to Manuel Casha in his Paper/Presentation (1994) for the Maltese Historical Association (Australia) titled ‘Għana’, Għana was considered as a means of whiling away the hours of recreation. Its vibrant nature was sometimes exploited in order to attract the attention of a loved one. “The emphasis was on the quality of the voice, not on originality, and the music was exuberant rather than rigorously played”.

Foreign Studies of Maltese Folklore

There have been several foreign observers of Għana as it attracted the attention of foreign writers and scholars, who wrote about and observed the beauty of the song, and the ability of the Maltese to sing and rhyme through the centuries.

The best collection of folk-songs and folk-tales are those by Fr. Manwel Magri S.J. (1901-07) and by the Austrian linguist, Professor Hans Stumme (1864-1936). Profs. Stumme was a scholar of Arabic Studies and Berberology. Between them, these two scholars collected about a hundred folk tales excluding variants. Professor L. Bonelli published a few in Archivio Glottologico Italiano (Supplement 1897).

According to R.N. Bradley, the author of “Malta and the Mediterranean Race”, (London 1912) Fraulein Bertha Ilg successfully translated Fr. Magri’s tales into German.

Bertha Ilg (1881-1965) was born in Obernzell, Bavaria, Germany. As a young girl she spent some time on the Island of Malta, where an uncle was German Consul. In Malta, she researched the folklore and traditions of the island’s original people.

Joseph Cassar-Pullicino, claims that, “The first study of għana on record, goes back to 1792, during the last years of the knights.”

A French knight, called St. Priest published a book called “Malte par une Voyageur Francais”, which included three għanjiet, as told to him by a Maltese librarian, Gioacchino Navarro.

Maltese Folk Songs translated into German

The concept of għana as being not only representative of the aspirations of the common people but also of the musical idiom of the working class has been emphasized by Professor Stumme in an introduction to a 1909 publication of four hundred Maltese għana songs collected by Bertha Ilg.

Although Stumme was mainly interested in the poetical text of għana he also provided a socio-cultural background for the poetic material included in this same publication. The following intuitive description not only sheds light on the functional role of għana among the working class sector, mainly that of ‘singing while you work’, but also reveals the early performance practices associated with the spirtu pront:

This book is considered as the best collection of folk song texts. Bertha Ilg succeeded to write down 500 Maltese songs under dictation mainly from persons of the lower classes calling at the German Consulate where she worked. There she submitted to Professor Hans Stumme of Leipzig in November 1907. 100 songs were discared and the rest were published to which Stumme contributed a scholarly intoduction.

The contribution of these two scholars has been recognised and honoured to the extent that two streets in St. Julian’s were named after them.