The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #16353   Message #3067457
Posted By: GUEST,Rajli Bicolli
04-Jan-11 - 10:19 PM
Thread Name: Albania folk music
Subject: RE: Albania folk music
Hi everyone,
I just wanted to give what I think is a better translation to this simple and beautiful song "Sh't'është nxirë vetulla". The translation found in the posts above is quite accurate except for the penultimate line. I am a native albanian speaker, (and I also happen to be a musician), and that line to an albanian has a different meaning from what Jane C Sugarman had provided.

Sh't'është nxirë vetulla (The correct way to write the title is actually "Ç'të është nxirë vetulla", but the first one makes sense from a dialect point of view.

Sh't'është nxirë vetulla tynë (ajde dhe moj--[repeated each time])?
Mos ia ke shtënë mazinë?
Jo e jo për perëndinë
ashtu ç'e kam bukurinë.
Bandilli në qytet të huaj
mollënë në xhep ia ruaj.
Ç'u kalp molla, ç'u gëris xhepi.

(English translation)
How is it that your eyebrows are so dark?
Is it that you've put on makeup?
No, no, in God's name,
that's just the beauty that I have.
The young man in a foreign city
I keep his apple in my pocket.
The apple rots, the pocket tears.


So the general meaning of the song also changes a bit, and it is all becasue of the words 'ia ruaj', at the end of that line, which in english roughly translate to 'for him I keep'. After the girl gets complimented on her beautiful eyebrows, she says that it is only her natural beauty. Then she adds that the her young man is far away, and that she always keeps an apple ready in her pocket for when he returns, but he has been gone so long that the apple begins to rot and drip from her pocket.

This kind of sad subject matter is very common in Albanian wedding music and songs.