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

their death song (s’attitudu), but even in the

singsongs of children and for children

(ninnios) which always contain a dark

foreboding of death or menace or

misfortune: almost the fear of the ancient

rulers’ or masters’ return.”

No doubt this state of submission has

determined the loss of an immense poetic

output that, above all at the beginning but to

a considerable degree until today, has been

an oral output, only a very small part of

which has been handed down from

generation to generation, almost as an act of

survival, or clandestinely assembled, as in

the case of F.I. Mannu’s aforementioned

hymn against the feudal lords. On the other

hand, the awareness of speaking one’s own

autonomous language has certainly not

favored that process of osmosis, of continual

exchange between language and dialect and