I don't know the song, but I find the phrase ziga ziga musca very interesting. Surely ziga ziga is from siga siga (accent on the second syllable), a very common modern Greek phrase meaning "be quiet be quiet", or more generally "go slowly" or "calm down." There may be some Greek influence also in musca: according to my Italian dictionary, the standard Italian for "fly" (the insect) is mosca; musca is the ancient Latin word, though I wonder if here it shows the influence of the ancient Greek muia.

I'm not enough of a linguist to speak with authority on this, but I believe it's well known that there are dialects of Greek (or Greek-Italian hybrid?) in southern Italy dating from ancient times when Greeks colonized the area. Even if your grandfather didn't speak one of those dialects, it's possible that the song he sang had preserved the Greek-dialect phrase in it.

Or maybe ziga-ziga, even though it isn't in my Italian dictionary, has been preserved in modern Neapolitan dialect from the Greek? Is it familiar to any Italian speakers reading this?


Jon Corelis
Euripides' Hippolytos: A performance version with music