Dialect Poetry of Southern Italy (Italian Poetry in Translation Book 2)

the land of Scanno”; the second, shorter (it

only has 16 stanzas), describes “La figlienza,”

Mariella’s childbirth. The work is of great

interest on the socio-linguistic level, with

valid poetic results, because it trenchantly

represents a whole environment and a

community that takes part in an

extraordinary event such as a wedding, from

the preparations to the vows in church, to

the procession, the banquet, the dance, the

dowry, the gifts, the final farewell.

Between the end of the 18th Century and

the beginning of the 19th we can situate a

certain Mascetta, archpriest of

Colledimacine, in the province of Chieti, to

whom is attributed a short but heartbreaking

text, “The Widow’s Lament,” anonymously

set to music and inspired on the figure of a

poor widow who, tormented by debts and

abandoned by everybody, becomes