e pisseroghej. Zuu shiu
menes; ne mee se Ijinaar
chish Ijeen pa-shuatur
skiotta, e i ducheje per moon.

I will only add that the translation of such a passage--it contains
twenty-eight accents which I have omitted--is mere child's play to its
pronunciation.




XXIV

AN ALBANIAN SEER


Sometimes I find my way to the village of Macchia, distant about three
miles from San Demetrio. It is a dilapidated but picturesque cluster of
houses, situate on a projecting tongue of land which is terminated by a
little chapel to Saint Elias, the old sun-god Helios, lover of peaks and
promontories, whom in his Christian shape the rude Albanian colonists
brought hither from their fatherland, even as, centuries before, he had
accompanied the Byzantines on the same voyage and, fifteen centuries yet
earlier, the Greeks.

At Macchia was born, in 1814, of an old and relatively wealthy family,
Girolamo de Rada, [Footnote: Thus his friend and compatriot, Dr. Michele
Marchiano, spells the name in a biography which I recommend to those who
think there is no intellectual movement in South Italy. But he himself,