If you’re at all into prehistory, mysticism or ancient cults or just fancy a more unusual start to your Christmas week – well armed with a flask of hot coffee – then do try to make Heritage Malta’s guided tours of Mnajdra, Thursday 22nd December, meeting at Hagar Qim temple at 06.00.

But, you’ll have to be quick, numbers are limited in order to ‘enhance the visitor experience’.

A bit of background from the experts
The unique setting of the Mnajdra Temples at Qrendi, overlooking the coast, gives them a special charm not to be found in any other of the large-scale megalithic buildings of the Maltese Islands, many of which lie in more urban areas or inland.

Sunrise on the first day of each season underlines the relationship between the temples and celestial bodies. Although it is not known for certain whether these orientations were intentional, they are so systematic that this is very probable. In prehistoric agricultural societies, observation of the motion of the stars, the moon and sun could have been related to the changing seasons and times of planting and harvesting crops.

On these days, the first rays of the sun light up the edge of a megalith found to the right of the central doorway connecting the first pair of chamber to the inner chamber of the Lower Mnajdra Temple.

Event Tickets & Further Info
Experience the Winter Solstice from Mnajdra Temples on the 22nd of December. Tickets can be purchased from all HM sites/museums for the price of €15 per person and €10 for HM members and will include a tour of Hagar Qim and Mnajdra Temples and access to the Visitor Centre. Meeting time is 6.00am at Hagar Qim Temples. Limited places. For further information contact 21424231.

For further information, see the Heritage Malta website. Tickets available also at the HM Head Office, Ex-Royal Naval Hospital, Marina Street, Bighi, Kalkara.

It’s a bit of a medley really. It’s also associated with one place only in Malta, as people flock to celebrate it in Buskett Gardens that lie between Rabat and Dingli. It’s a family affair with people taking picnics and tents to spend a night out under the small pines which make up Malta’s largest stretch of woodland, planted by the Knights as a hunting grounds.

The feast has roots dating back well before the time of the Knights in Malta. ‘L’Imnajra’ is the Maltese corruption of the Italian word ‘Luminara’ meaning festival of light. The feast’s celebrations were once marked by bonfires lit in Mdina and Rabat, so folklore has it.

What to Expect
The night is characterised by general merry-making and its sociable atmosphere, with people bringing along instruments and making music. Local folk and ethnic-inspired bands usually turn up to play and set the scene. Families have BBQs and picnics and kids romp around. Traditionally, people take rabbit (Fenek) stew to eat. It’s a Maltese national dish and there’s even a Maltese word for ‘going out to eat rabbit’ – Fenkata! Some families and groups of friends make a complete summer night of L’Imnarja and camp out.

The following day sees more organised rural pursuits: there is an agricultural show, which gets larger each year (seems to be a trend in Malta recently) as well as traditional bare-back horse and donkey races on Saqqajja Hill below Mdina. So expect some traffic chaos and roads blocked around that area.

Visitor Value
If you want to see some real Malta, then this could be worth a visit. It’s not the sheer exuberance of a village feast, as it’s more a summer folklore and farming affair. But it does have a certain appeal and charm. You will need to bus it there (Bus 81 from Valletta seems the best bet). Take some food and drink, get stuck in, and go with the flow. This is an impromptu affair in some ways, where people make their own fun.

More info & Programme: see our events listings.

Photo:rabbit: John Haslam. Guitar in firelight: Ben Kunesh

Ghanafest 2011 is once again more than simply three evenings renditions’ of Malta’s traditional Għana. The programme sees groups and performers from across the Mediterranean: this year’s guests include: Nakaira from Sicily; Navà ensemble with Persian music and Swing a’ la Turc quartet from Turkey. On the bill from Malta, in addition to the pure Għana performers, we find The Big Band Brothers, Trania, and singer-songwriters David Azzopardi and The Greenfields. The event is an eclectic blend of beats and rhythms with a folkloristic slant but more often than not with a contemporary sound.

For the uninitiated or just plain curious, the festival is above all a wonderful opportunity to come to grips with Maltese Għana in its various forms. If you know Għana at all, you are probably familiar with the high-pitch singing, but that is just one form. Għana covers: ‘Spirtu Pront’ (quick-wit), an improvised form of song duel (extremely difficult to perform yet done raucously and flawlessly by a few real professionals); ‘Tal-Fatt’ (factual), a composed narrative that may be fictional or based on true events; and ‘Fil-Għoli’ (high-pitched), a style of singing on a high vocal register.

Għanafest itself promises three nights of all-round Mediterranean musical fun, and it all takes place in the magical night-time setting of Argotti Gardens perched on the bastions. It goes without saying that this is a family affair. There’s an artisan fair and Maltese food on offer, as well as a series of workshops on traditional instruments and a special programme for children.

Programme: see the Għanafest website: maltafolkmusicfestival.org.

Festival Info
The Festival runs over three evenings, 10, 11 & 12 June from 19:00, Argotti Gardens, Floriana – within walking distance from Valletta.
Tickets: Tickets: €2 and €5 for a three-day block ticket available at the door.
Parking available at the Floriana Boy Scouts headquarters, right next to the venue.
Contact: Tel: +356 21232515; Mob: +356 79048179
Email: sarah-lee.zammit@maltaculture.com
Website: Malta Council for Culture & the Arts

For more on Għana, see Wikipedia.

Photo: by Stephen Buhagiar, courtesy of Malta Council for Culture & the Arts.

More details, see our What’s On listing.

Here, Amanda Holmes give a low-down on a past festival. Her verdict: whatever the weather, it’s fun for families.

Mdina is a beautifully-preserved UNESCO World Heritage site, but perhaps for some it is ironically too well conserved. I once had a discussion with a tourist who said he found it too quiet – almost a ghost city. I could appreciate his point. But, I always love wandering around Mdina; it’s small enough for even the youngest (or oldest) legs to get around.

On a damp, chilly, grey Saturday in mid April, my family was delighted to find the streets full of knights, noble-folk, falconers, wenches and the odd town crier. Chain-mail clad soldiers wandered past stalls selling strange, (medieval-style?) vittles (soup in a rock-hard roll, and dry cabbage and onion pies). Museums, chapels, churches and cafes were all wide open, with attractions such as The Mdina Experience charging a reduced entrance fee. Since rain stopped many people venturing out, there were relatively few folk in twenty-first century garb, which made the overall effect better for those of us who had made the journey.

My daughters were delighted with a little square where we found traditional crafts. An enormous loom and a hand pottery wheel were set up beside a man making baskets and another selling local honey and beeswax produce under an ancient tree. The girls spent ages tasting the different jars fruit-flavoured honey, which were so delicious that my eldest opted to spend €4 of her pocket money on a tiny jar of strawberry honey. Meanwhile the lady selling the hand-woven rugs took great pains to point out that they were all machine washable. And at €25 for a large bedside rug, probably a better investment!

Outside the walls, the defensive ditches were the location for games which appealed to all ages. Strapping young men sat on horses (from a gym, not stable), trying to imitate jousting by prodding each other with a long wooden stick. For those who were slightly more risk-averse, a wooden walkway and frame had been erected with swinging axes, hammers and spiked balls, each over a metre in size, looking incredibly dangerous but made of foam. The idea was to get from one side to the other without getting knocked off. You could, however, choose to play safe (or play executioner) and opt to pull on the ropes to swing the ‘weapons’.

You could also have a go at firing a catapult loaded with ‘rocks’ aimed at cardboard figures attempting to breach the city’s defences. It was pretty realistic and made quite some bang on firing, so the kids recoiled with eyes shut and missed seeing where their missile went.

At a safe distance from the catapult we found a mobile climbing wall; not particularly medieval at first glance, but conveniently the same height as the Mdina walls, so it gave a good impression of what it must have been like to attempt to scale the walls at a time of battle. Well, minus the armour, arrows and burning oil of course.

All-in-all we had a fantastic day. Six hours after we arrived the kids were still going strong, but I was chilled to the bone so dragged my complaining family back to car. Luckily for me, we found some olde mulled wine beside one of the city gates, so even I was happy as we headed for home.

Photo: courtesy Mdina Medieval Festival

Everybody's watching someone at the masked Nadur carnival

Malta’s Carnival 2012 runs 17 – 21 February.  See the main Valletta Carnival programme 2012 here.  For activities happening around Malta, see Carnival in the Villages activities. 

Already shops are advertising kids’ costumes and masks flutter in the wind, tied up outside the sell-it-all corner shops.  No sooner is the festive season over than the next occasion to purchase is up and running.

If you’ve children, carnival coincides with school half-terms and kids always leap at the chance to have a holiday and get parents to spend. Carnival has always been a time for extravagance though, throughout the centuries…

Carnival’s history in Malta is well documented here. It was a key festivity in the religious calendar in Malta under the Knights of St John. While encouraged at first, its growing licentiousness, rowdiness, brawls and wild festivities in general made some Grand Masters curtail and even censure it in various periods.

Certainly, it has included elements that might make today’s kids pale as they make their annual and harmless trek mid-term to Valletta to see the floats in their ‘grand défilé, with the King Carnival pride of place. Carnival is centred on Valletta, where the city gate was demolished in the late 1950s, as urban legend has it, to build one high and wide enough for floats to pass through! The new Renzo Piano city gate to be will no doubt have factored in carnival’s needs!

Some aspects of the darker sides of carnival’s history – the macabre, lewd and grotesque – live on. The Nadur carnival in Gozo, is one of the only surviving spontaneous (rather than totally organised) carnivals today, and definitely includes some blacker moments, though probably none as vicious as those in the times of the Knights. Recent years have seen some of the revellers, who had dressed as nuns – and one as Jesus, hauled up in the courts for violating a ban on vilifying the Catholic Religion.

If you do delve into the history of Malta’s carnival though, you’ll find the debate about its returning to its roots (whatever they really were) has come up time and again over the centuries. No single era seems to have harnessed carnival and avoided its propensity to surprise, defy, and live on!

For children though, carnival is an annual and predictable event. It’s a time to not wear school uniform, and to eat a gooey mound of prinjolata (a carnival-time cake of sponge, cream, citrus peel, glace fruits, biscuits and more calorific things) and to enjoy the organised processions in Valletta.

Carnival Programmes 2012:

Main carnival activities, Valletta: Carnival programme 2012.

Carnival in the Villages activities.

Top Photo: Courtesy of Obs1

Malta as it once was: agricultural life writ large

Siggiewi’s now annual agricultural fare kicks off on tonight, Saturday 12 June, at dusk and runs till late morning on Sunday. It seems to get bigger (and better) each year, and far more marketing goes into the event – islanders in central Malta have no doubt caught a billboard or two roadside.

It’s a wonderful, easy-going mishmash of a livestock show, heritage event and farmers’ market – and an excuse for local folk to get some air on summer night and have somewhere to go. It’s a prelude to the villlage festa, just two weeks away. Siggiewi’s unusually large, sloping and picturesque village piazza is already decked out with festa regalia. It’s heart-warming that Malta is beginning to relish its rural past, and to see skills, crafts and genuine Maltese produce appreciated by young and old, and locals and visitors alike. There are several rural events now, including the Mgarr’s Strawberry Fair, and Dingli’s Sheep & Goat festival.

What to Expect
Based on last year’s event. you can expect some: Pageantry: we had a reenactment of the Grand Master handing over a falcon to Holy Roman Emperor Charles V as rental payment for the Maltese Islands.

Working machinery: Pride of place last year in the square was an ancient threshing machine that rattled and hummed into action, man atop loading straw, and was soon spewing out chaff all over the gathered crowd.

Artefacts of yesteryear: a small tent was set up last year housing old agricultural implements and canteen items that farmers would use in the fields to brew up coffee. In fact, you could see the brewing in action as nearby sat an old lady, in typical floral dress/apron, turning a coffee bean roaster over an open fire (see photo below). A stall next to her was serving the clove-flavoured coffee for free to an appreciative, and curious crowd.

Livestock: Falabella ponies, donkeys, prize sheep and goat breeds, some with their young, and a lama in pens which enthrall the kids. Sunday morning early is the ‘blessing’ of the animals and Sunday too saw some heavy horses on display.

Local Produce: both evening and morning saw stallholders selling some genuine local produce, including thyme honey, certified organic olive oil (impressively with an EU accreditation on it) and lots of peaches and tomatoes, which grow well in the Siggiewi area.

Roasting coffee beans, Maltese style

Passed down the generations - how Malta's myths & legends survive

This title of this guest post speaks for itself. Malta of old, perhaps even today, is brim full of stories, folklore, legends, superstition, tradition and ritual.

Evarist Bartolo, Shadow Minister for Education and a lecturer in communications at the University of Malta, writes what seems a short story. But one can’t help wonder that some strange truth lies behind the episode he relates.

As a child, I lived with my grandmother and aunt near the sanctuary in Mellieha in one of the row of troglodyte houses with the bedroom and the kitchen in caves. Only the sitting room was constructed at the mouth of the cave and provided the simple façade of the house.

The devils were all around me as a child. Our grandmother made sure we knew that. Every summer evening, enjoying the fresh breeze, we all gathered outside on the pavement and street after sunset, and after dozing for 15 minutes through the rosary, I would wake up wide eyed to listen to her telling us what used to happen a long time ago in Mellieha.

At night I used to cover my head with the sheet to try not to see the flickering red light cast across the walls by the slow paraffin cooker on which a coffee pot was put to brew slowly all night for the morning. I was sure that the red light was coming from a crack in the rock and I was even surer that the crack led to hell, deep within the earth and from which any moment a devil might come to take me away.

I had seen the picture of the death of the bad man: a desperate man was looking down to the right corner of the room where he lay dying and a devil was coming out of the ground to take him away. “Because he lived a bad life” my grandmother told me over and over again.

I became even more alarmed when one evening she decided to tell us about the farmhouse that the devils built overnight on the edge of Mellieha: in the valley on your way down to Mellieha Bay the devils had decided to build a farmhouse. They built it in a night with huge blocks of stones. I did not dare ask why the devils had decided to take up farming in Mellieha. I simply decided that there was no way I would walk to that part of the village to check for myself the builders’ craftsdevilship.

I could see the devils working hard at night, cutting the big boulders, carrying them on their shoulders and building the farmhouse. I had no doubts whatsoever that the devils which looked like black and red lizards walking upright on their hind legs, dragging their long tail behind them, were very strong and could do whatever they liked, including building a large farmhouse in a night, after all they regularly dragged millions of sinners to hell where they roasted them and plunged sharp tridents into them.

So I never dared walk to the valley to see this farmhouse. I did not even know where it was exactly. Years later I chanced upon it as a teenager walking with my family when one of my sisters yelled at seeing a huge bale of straw approaching slowly over the hill. She was sure that the wizened old farmer was in fact one of the devils who had built the farmhouse and was now carrying that straw out of the silent farmhouse in the valley. Even that day I kept away from the farmhouse and decided to look at it safely from the other side of the valley.

I could understand perfectly what I read years later in Leonard Mahoney’s ‘5000 Years of Architecture in Malta’: “Superstitious farmers who tilled their lands in the vicinity never dreamt of making a closer acquaintance and so, protected by its name as much as by its solitude, it had stood unmolested for many years.” Is it a hunting lodge or a cow house? What did this building serve for? Who built it? Even Leonard Mahoney fails to answer these questions. “The food troughs (or mangers) are enormous and very high from the floor; evidence, as the local folk point out, that the (devil) owner of this farmhouse kept enormous (devil?) cows.”

He concedes: “But mystery wraps this building. There are no armorial bearings, or inscriptions, or even graffiti …to throw light on its original purpose or use.”

My grandmother might have been right after all and while I look at the solid windowless building on my way to Mellieha Bay I have yet to visit the place and enter it.

Photo: Courtesy of Walter Lo Cascio

Madonnas: usual in churches, niches & festas; not usually found doorstepping you.

A day ago, I had a knock at the door just before 7pm. I rushed, thinking it was the postman as I was expecting an online purchase to arrive.

I opened to find, however, two late middle-aged ladies bearing a statue of the Virgin Mary.

It was about two feet high and in the regular pale, baby blue with rosy blushed cheeks and hands clasped in prayer. There was a moments pause while I did a double take, my mind now racing to whether I had any small change in my purse for some collection or other, or wondering whether they had come to preach on my doorstep. They too seemed a bit taken aback; I was obviously not Maltese and had a stunned look on my face which spelled out clearly that I had no idea at all what they wanted.

I said ‘Yes?’ with a hanging question mark. They paused, then one said ‘We’re taking the statue from house to house’. My brows furrowed and I think I said another ‘Yes?’. I was light years away still from fathoming their motive for being there or doing that. Statues are in churches, on street corners, in niches above doors and come out at village festa time. But never in my 16 years in Malta had I come across a small one going from house to house.

The ladies didn’t seem to know what to say next. The pause lingered. I decided that since they weren’t going to manage to explain, and I needed to get back to cooking, something had to be said or done to let us all get on. Since the thing wasn’t meant for my household – I was quite sure about that – I said the first thing I could think of that would end the situation, which was: ‘We’re protestant.’ They said ‘Oh’, smiled a faint smile and I closed the door.

An hour later, I was enlightened by the lady who baby sits my son. Apparently, the month of May is dedicated to the Rosary, and it’s a custom for the ‘statue’ to reside for a week with a household before passing on to a neighbour. I am still not sure if the two occurrences are linked. The lady told me that she hadn’t had the statue for over 20 years in her house, and to think I’d passed on the opportunity. With 52 weeks a year and goodness known how many houses in my large village, it’s not surprising. I think a lot of Maltese don’t know about this tradition either, and it may be something that’s common in more rural areas or villages.

So, if you’re living here, have you had the statue in your house in living memory?

Photo: courtesy Mike krzeszak

Bah, what's up? Oh, we're centre stage for once? Dingli Agricultural Fair

Had-Dingli, on Malta’s west coast, is holding a sheep and goat fair this Sunday, 25th April, on Dingli Cliffs in front of the small chapel of St Magdalena. For the early birds, it starts at the rise-and-shine hour of 7am but luckily runs most of the day for those of us who like a lie-in.

I have to admit, Sheep & Goat Fair was last year’s title. Strictly speaking, it’s billed this year as a ‘Traditional Agricultural Fair’ (Hidma Agrarja u Tradizzjanijiet), which means it has widened in scope to be a showcase of the agricultural life of the area, past and present. It will include a range of country displays, competitions, wine and food tastings, folk dancing, horse-drawn Karozzin rides, stalls, and fun and games, in addition to the goats and sheep.

There’s no place better than Dingli Cliffs to see these shaggy, mixed breed sheep and goats. It’s one of the few places you will see still these animals of indeterminate, but so useful a breed ambling along, plucking at weeds, shepherd somewhere alongside. It’s a real treat to come across them – a picture postcard shot of country life on our urban islands.

Sunday’s programme has plenty on it to while away a couple of hours and always plenty to engage the kids. I am sure there’ll be eats around, and not all Ġbejniet goats’ cheeselets either!

Fair Programme

From 7am-11am
Goat and Sheep Display
Milk competition with demonstration of how fresh cheeselets are made
Sheep milking demo

From 11am
Mass in front of the Chapel on the cliffs

During the Whole Day
Cultural and Ecological walks (worth noting that so-called Clapham Junction prehistoric ‘cart ruts’ are neaby, as is Buskett Gardens)
Rides in Karozzin – traditional horse drawn carriages
Wine Competition
Display of fresh fruit and vegetables
Traditional music, dancing and Ghana (Maltese folk singing)
Traditional games for children and adults
Various exhibitions of:
- Old-fashioned shepherds’ tools
- Maltese handicrafts
Displays by Dingli Scouts and Girl Guides

Related Posts
More info on Ghana, here (next Ghanafest, 4-6 June, 2010, Argotti Gardens. See What’s On for details.)
A lovely story about Maltese goats & yesteryear, click here
Agricultural Fair, Siggiewi (early June). Click here for what to expect. We will update once we have this year’s dates.

Photo: courtesy of Anne Muscat Scerri, Cloudberry Images.

Five men make light work of a heavy statue or three. Say cheese.

There are 359 churches over 316 sq km in Malta.  That’s 1.14 churches per sq km. I believe that puts Malta slap behind the Vatican in terms of church coverage .  Now consider that we have 1,309 inhabitants per sq km, that 98% of Maltese are baptised Roman Catholic and every village has some band club of sorts and the theocracy maths starts getting complicated.

I live in Siggiewi, right behind the lovely baroque dome of St Nicholas parish church. You cannot get more village hard core than this. If I crane my neck, from my wi-fi station in the garden, the dome soars above the TV aerials and the water tanks and the pigeon coops.

Maundy Thursday is migraine day.   During the day, the bell ringing in incessant, perhaps to encourage visits to the  Last Supper pageant.  In the evening, at exactly 20.23 hrs the bell-ringing is replaced by a loud, relentless rattle.  It’s difficult to describe, except that it’s a horrible, slow, throaty, tuneless sound that could be a large, megaphoned cheese-grater or some special effect from a Hammer Horror film.  It scares the living daylight out of anyone aged 7 or under and means I will not sleep well right up to Easter Sunday, when the bell-ringing will be even more energetic, and hopefully more tuneful.

The second phenomenon is that from Maundy Thursday all the way to the evening of Good Friday, people go on a carcade of seven churches.  If you’re a kid, it’s an interesting ritual if you’re not prone to car-sickness, as you get to visit churches off the beaten track and compare tapestries, statues and overall opulence of the parish your parents happen to hit on.  And if you crash a village at the right time, you can also join the traditional, occasionally gruesome Good Friday procession and meet a Roman centurion or your own personal Jesus.

Add to this fasting, special confectioneries and theories about the weather and you have a uniquely Maltese cocktail of folklore, religion and superstition rolled into one.

I wonder how many people on Good Friday are barricaded like me, in a village core besieged by the madding crowds clocking up the church count, to the backdrop of a grating rattle.

Photo: Andrew Galea Debono