The hymn of ‘the sweet mother who bore us’

It was the last day of October, 11 years ago. I found the door to Professor Oliver Friggieri’s office at the University of Malta slightly ajar. I knocked and looked in. His smile seemed to breathe life into the room, crammed with books and papers.

Beside his closed laptop lay L-Istorja tal-Innu Malti, Kif Sar U Xi Jfisser, his most recent publication. It was open at a page showing Dun Karm’s manuscript of the first version of the anthem, written on 25 November 1922. This was a month before the final revised version, dated 27 December of the same year.

Here is the text in its original spelling and punctuation:

Lil din l-omm ħelwa li nisslitna, il-gżira

Li bl-isbaħ sema u l-oħla ġmiel libbist,

Ħares, Mulejja, f’din is-sigħa kbira,

Ħanin, kif lilha dejjem Int ħarist.

Agħti, kbir Alla, id-dehen lil min jaħkimha;

Gedded fil ħidma s-saħħa lil ħaddiem;

Rodd il għaqal u l-ħajr għal ġih ta’ isimha;

Seddaq il għaqda fil maltin u s-sliem.

Professor Friggieri’s smile from behind the desk invited me to sit down. He told me that although there are several differences, the original idea is probably the same. The fact that in the first version the Maltese anthem is made up of two stanzas of four lines instead of two stanzas of three lines may indicate that there was a problem over which lines would fit Robert Samut’s melody. Dun Karm himself had expressed this concern, since the music was written before the verses.

Adjusting his round spectacles on his nose, he went on to explain that the essential words and phrases are always the same: omm (mother), ħelwa (sweet), l-oħla (sweetest), libbist (clothed), ħares (protect), ħarist (protected), and the rest. It seems that between November and December of that same year Dun Karm kept the same wording, while having to choose the tercet instead of the quatrain, and made major changes.

He recounted how he had spent years gathering Dun Karm’s poems in Maltese and Italian from archives, private collections and manuscript notebooks, yet never found the Maltese anthem among them. This likely meant that, since the anthem was already widely printed, Dun Karm saw no need to copy it out. Eventually, through Prof. Joseph M. Brincat, he obtained from Ann Gingell Littlejohn a photocopy of the first version in Dun Karm’s own handwriting, an authentic reproduction of an original manuscript that is now lost.

After its revision, the Maltese anthem was first performed at the Manoel Theatre on 27 December 1922 and gradually became a popular expression of Maltese identity. It received official recognition in 1941 but was only formally adopted as the national anthem in the Constitution when Malta gained independence on 21 September 1964. In the shadow of the ‘language question’, Dun Karm deliberately wrote the anthem without a single word of foreign origin, to show that Maltese did not need to borrow from other languages.

Manuscript by Dun Karm with the first version of the Maltese National Anthem, written on 25 November 1922, a month before the anthem’s first performance in a completely revised, final version at the Manoel Theatre on 27 December 1922. (Collection of Ann Gingell Littlejohn. Photo: L-Istorja tal-Innu Malti, Klabb Kotba Maltin.)

As he leafed through some further details, Friggieri told me that the words Dun Karm uses, such as ‘jaħkimha’, ‘ħniena’ and ‘sid’, have more than one meaning. These “old” words are still understood today.

“Jaħkimha means ‘to govern it’, ‘to rule it’; ħniena means ‘respect’, ‘justice’, ‘appreciation’; and sid is the person who employs workers. This means that the Maltese anthem is still relevant. Even if it were old-fashioned, it should remain, because it is the heritage of our forefathers,” Friggieri had told me.

When Malta was about to become a republic in 1974, parliament had to discuss various amendments to the 1964 independence Constitution. Under that Constitution, to amend the clause concerning the Maltese anthem, a two-thirds majority of the votes in the House, as well as a referendum, were required. With the constitutional amendments of 1974 it was decided that a simple majority would be enough to change the Maltese anthem.

“The date on which it becomes a national anthem marks the moment when a country has reached a high level of awareness of itself as a people shaping a nation,” I remember Friggieri telling me, with crystal clarity.

This brief exchange I had with Friggieri provides some insight on the debate about the suitability of the national anthem in a modern-day context that has been sparked by a proposal for a constitutional amendment that will recognise 27 December as National Anthem Day. The amendment is currently before parliament.