Let us celebrate a paradox of love today:
Let us dance! Let us sing!
Hug Mother Nature with music and bliss!
Yet push the dagger deep,
Deep in her heart of love,
Let the blood ooze with laughter and joy,
Let us celebrate Selmun today!
Today, Mellieħa Local Council is holding an open day at Selmun. This is an original idea aimed at instilling in visitors a love of the environment in all its aspects – cultural and natural. It is, of course, a great pity that only some distance away, on the same garigues on the same day, we can witness the sheer insensitivity of man against the same aspects of the environment.
On one side of the garigues we have man in his official efforts to glorify the beauty of the environment, and on the other side we have man again officially destroying the same beauty of that same environment by digging the old earth and building a fish packaging factory. On one side we have man in his official attempts to exalt the rocks and the fields and his relationship with Mother Nature, and on the other side of the same garigues we have man in his official attempts to forget these same cultural aspects that had tied him to Mother Nature for many centuries, and construct a fish packaging factory! On one side we have man talking about heritage walks and the beauty of our heritage, and on the same garigues we have man grinding away at the same garigues to build a factory to pack fish! On one side we have oblivious merrymaking and strutting pride, on the other side we have the crying rocks bequeathed to us by the dead peasants being ripped open by powerful machines.
The situation is clearly as paradoxical as it is absurd and crazy, incredible but real. I want to point out this undeniable aspect of the Maltese attitude towards the same environment: this cruel dualism is a glaring characteristic that describes our identity as well. We destroy yet we feign to construct. We kill yet we give the impression of giving life. I am not pointing fingers dear readers. But we are hypocrites. That is the word. We are pure hypocrites.
Selmun – the Name
As people today visit the old farmhouses and the ancient garigues, let them also know some of the story of the place. Let them know that it was not always like this: there were times when the garigues were sacred and there were times when man loved Mother Nature. There were times when the barren rocks were not sacrificed and gnawed and ground by the monstrous Hymacs; the wild thyme and the dry thorny plants were the things that helped man get his subsistence. Man has not always hated Mother Nature. There were times when man respected and loved her.
The Maltese historian Ġan Franġisk Abela (1582-1655) believed the name Salamun, Selmun, was derived from that of a family bearing the surname Salomone, which brings to mind the story of a brave feat performed by Marco di Maria, a member of the Salomone family, at the time of the French Grand Master Jean de la Cassiere (1572-1581).The quick action and presence of mind of Marco, who was the pilot of a Maltese xprunara – a small coaster – not only saved his life and the life of his sailors, but was also responsible for a small historical incident that probably gave Selmun its name.
Marco was on his way back home from the Barbary Coast. As he approached Gozo, he was chased by a vessel of the Bizerta fleet and was on the point of being overtaken. In a desperate attempt to escape, he put the vessel on course to pass through the narrow channel separating Il-Gżejjer from the mainland, at the point known as Il-Blata. To do this he had to use a swift and risky manoeuvre called in Italian conigliare. He first brought his men from the prow to the stern of the vessel and then, in another swift move, back from the stern to the prow. He thus succeeded in going through the channel, while the enemy vessel ran aground because its master did not know that the sea was very shallow in some places.
As a sign of recognition for de Maria’s bravery, La Cassiere gave the islands to him and his descendants. On Marco’s death they passed to his son Giovanni and then to his nephew Narduccio, both of whom were pilots. Narduccio did not have any heirs and so the islands reverted to the Order. In time, the Salomones went to live in Sicily.
According to Professor Godfrey Wettinger, however, the name place Selmun is not unique in Malta, but occurs also in other places – one close to Bubaqra near il-Baqqari, as well as Selmuna near Tal-Barrani, Żejtun.
Ransom from Slavery
In those distant days, the Mediterranean Sea was still the stage for bitter struggles between the Crescent and the Cross – Islam and Christianity. Muslims and Christians killed each other simply in the name of their religious beliefs. Innocent people were killed without mercy, and for centuries on end the two factions chased each other all over the Mediterranean with the intention of establishing the supremacy of their God. The Maltese Islands not only witnessed all this and more, but frequently participated in all the happenings. Many women and children were snatched by Muslim corsairs and forcibly carried away as slaves during sudden incursions.
Christian European princes had established a mechanism whereby Christian and Muslim slaves would be exchanged or ransomed. Such an institution was also established in Malta in 1607 by Alof de Wignacourt, Grand Master from 1601 to 1622. In an entry in the Knights’ records, the Liber Conciliorum of the Order, it is said that the Grand Master acted on a suggestion made by a Capuchin preacher, Father Rafel Camilleri, in 1607 during a Lenten sermon when he mentioned the sufferings endured by Maltese slaves at the hands of the Muslims. Selmun and its surroundings found a place in the history books when the area was donated to one of these organisations set up to free local slaves. It was known as the Monte della Redenzione degli Schiavi.
My grandmother Ġużeppa, an old peasant at Selmun, told this nice legend regarding the origin of the Monte della Redenzione. It was said that three people were inspired by God in a dream to make a special act of charity: a pious woman, the king and the bishop. And it so happened that when this woman went to the Grand Master and the Bishop, they were already aware of what she was telling them as they had had the same dream. The three of them, therefore, came to the conclusion that this was a miracle and they had to act immediately and, as ordered in the dream, established an institution to raise money for the ransom of Maltese and Gozitans who had fallen into slavery and had either been taken to the Barbary Coast or to spend their lives rowing on Turkish ships.
Caterina Vitale, who was among the congregation during the Bishop’s sermon, expressed her wish to ransom some Maltese. When she died in 1617, Caterina left all her land at Selmun to the foundation. Her charitable act is recorded in a painting by Antonio de Favray (1706-1792) which lies above the main altar of the chapel of Our Lady of Ransom at Selmun. Lands appertaining to the Monte were marked with a coat-of-arms consisting of three loaves with the letter R (for Redenzione) over them, in the same way as Church property was, at one time, marked by the biblical serpent. The coat-of-arms of the Redenzione can still be seen over some places in Selmun, including the façade of Selmun Palace, on the Bir tal-Ħnejja up the hill that leads to the palace and on the Mistra arch, together with the coat-of-arms of Grand Master Manoel Pinto de Fonseca (1741-1773).
Caterina seems to have been a generous person and there are several legends around her name. Although so many centuries have passed since her death and her donation, as recently as a few years ago there were those who remembered their elders saying that it Caterina’s wish that every girl born at Selmun should have the right to marry in the palace. These were merely legends, since Caterina could never have expressed such a wish (the palace not having been built in her lifetime). These legends say that the palace had a beautiful and well-equipped kitchen, complete with pots and pans, crockery and other utensils for use on the wedding day. Poor peasants told me how they had seen all this richness – who knows who owns all this richness now!
Looming Arm of Destruction
The Selmun promontory used to be inhabited by a farming community that forms part of the universal group of human beings we call peasants. They all loved their fields and their garigues, because they represented their livelihood, and they never destroyed their own habitat. The garigues at il-Ħawlija, now part of the industrial fish packaging site, those at il-Ħewwiexa, at Għajn Ħadid, at iċ-Ċens, the tower at the edge of the cliff, the underlying beach-posts, the old farms, the old rubble walls, the trenches, the watch-rooms on the tops of the adjoining hills, Fort Campbell itself, the incongruous buildings on the garigues, the incongruous hotel next to the majestic palace, the big, ugly hole in the ground to accommodate the new incongruous industrial activity – all these cannot but remind us of man’s attempts to use and abuse the countryside as best suits him. Man modified his environment in the stupid belief that the environment was only his and no one else’s. Other creatures had no right over the environment, and the fauna and flora of the Selmun garigues mean nothing. Nothing at all. Fish packaging is more important. And while we should be protesting against the industrial activity, we are dancing and singing!
But it will be human hands that will definitely change Selmun, its cultural and its natural surroundings. It will be the very greed of humanity that will deprive man of the same beauty that he loves. It is man who is destroying the same garigues that he needs to protect. In the past, Mellieħa Council has been blind and shamefully inert and did not raise a finger to prevent permanent damage to these garigues and to Selmun Palace. My suggestion to make the Selmun promontory a national park with ethnographic information for heritage walks were futile, so I am consequently more than pleased that the present Council is now creating heritage walks and has secured European funding in favour of our heritage.
The current Mellieħa Local Council consists of no-nonsense members who will not even allow a BBQ on the beach. The Council initially took a strong stand against the fish-packaging activity but unfortunately the power of the industrial entrepreneur proved to be overwhelmingly stronger than any power the Council could hope to garner and it had to succumb to pressure. The Council could clearly do nothing, as even the Prime Minister himself expressed his agreement to the fish factory on these Mellieħa garigues. The ugly experience that had destroyed Mistra meant nothing. Mellieħa Council eventually agreed to the project and the industrial activity that it had originally opposed is now destroying Selmun.