Published this month, Maltese Mythology Volume 2 by Stephen D Mifsud is a journey through the intriguing maze of Maltese folklore. In an inviting well-illustrated miscellany of old legend, fascinating facts and modern musings, Mifsud draws on an old overview of Maltese Mythology compiled nearly 120 years ago. From this core, he reviews and explores elements of local folklore, reinterpreting stories that span a millennium and have parallels with legends from other countries, particularly those around the Mediterranean.
“The present is built on the past; it turns out that mythology, like history and archaeology, gives us a better understanding of the world we live in.” says Mifsud.
For most readers, many of the tales and anecdotes within the pages will be new or newly elucidated yet intangibly familiar, and it’s a delight to see the island’s long oral tradition brought back into public consciousness.
Whilst volume 1 focused on myths including the deities in Maltese lore, in this second volume (which can be enjoyed whether or not you have read the first one), Mifsud primarily explores the beliefs related to the ‘minor spirits’, many of which were still commonplace a hundred years ago when ‘Maltese folk still respected the old ways and feared the unknown all around them.’
These relate to, for example, the ringing of church bells to dispel a storm; the other worldly custodians that protected houses and buildings; the reason there are niches on so many of road junctions here, and the association of trees with the spirit world. Although the Maltese word ‘il-Barka’ is today thought of as a holy blessing, adds Mifsud, the word’s origins lie in the perceived power of the Carob tree to keep demons at bay.
There are dozens of captivating nuggets of information, perfect to store up and retell, on every page, whether historical or hearsay. There are winged demons, the personification of female wrath, black cats and werewolves. You’ll meet the għul of North Africa, often portrayed as a man with long hair and beard, hairy hands and feet, and overgrown nails; and the lamia, a man-eating monster with a serpentine lower half.
In the nineteenth century, says Mifsud, ‘everyone in Rabat knew that the stonemason called Ferraru was a ‘waħx’ (a night-time shapeshifting monster), and, readers will smile at the story of a young naked witch who fell from the sky into the grounds of the Capuchin monastery in Kalkara. There she lay, unclothed, prostrate upon the ground whilst the monks stood around in consternation but were fortunately saved by a lay brother versed in the secret arts. And there’s even a fleeting mention of Harry Potter!
Elsewhere, an image of a half-man-half fish statuette found in Gozo in 1891 was first thought to be the god Dagun. It is now identified by modern historians as a doll made in Ancient Egypt, a caricature of a Minoan soldier with feathered headgear.
Interspersed with the many characters and happenings, Mifsud weaves in observations from Magri, overlaid with his own commentary as he follows and expands upon Magri’s untangling of the ‘amalgamation of motifs’ from earlier and contemporaneous civilisations. Magri, for example noted that “while the Greeks pictured their wind-gods as winged men, the Maltese described them as birds of prey.” If i-irjieħ – or wind gods – were to be pictured as bird of prey, then, suggests Mifsud, surely the local Maltese Falcon would be the most likely candidate, echoing the form of deities from North Africa.
And so in this way, just as Malta’s geography is a patchwork of hundreds of terraced fields, hills, alleys and coves, Mifsud constructs an intriguing and magical view of these island’s past, traditions and culture in 180 bulging pages that will keep pulling you back like the Sirens who enticed sailors from the sea onto our land.
Yes, it’s a cracker for the coffee table! Get your hands on a copy here.
