by Eneo Xhepa. Translation Petrit Latifi

The Albanian people are rich in children’s songs, which the children sing themselves. In Southern Albania there are mocking songs, humorous distortions of the Greek church words that the priest pronounces:

Doxasi o theos imon; doxasi!
Then the boys turn them into meaningless rhymes:
Okesi gjus mokesi, kindesi pesedijjesi!
Or they take the beginning of the Greek prayer Pater imon (“Our Father”), and turn it into mocking verse:
Pater imon, old man old man gjemon!
(‘Our Father, the old man is beating the old woman!’)
And they continue with similar humor…

So the children, hearing the priest singing in Greek in church (Pater imon – “Our Father”), did not understand it well and turned it into a rhyme of their own full of jokes:
“Pater imon, the old man is shouting at the old woman”
which means something like “Our Father, the old man is shouting at the old woman” a typical mockery of children who mocked the language of the church.

At the end, the author adds that:

“When spring comes, Albanian children sing their songs about birds again, like the swallow, just as children used to do in ancient Greece.”

Albanian children of the past had a wonderful humor and turned the prayers of priests into hilarious verses. In today’s Greece these poems no longer exist, but among Albanian children they have remained alive, like an echo of the antiquity that once covered all of old Epirus. This means that among us, in the language and soul of our children, that ancient world that was once called “Greece”, but which was essentially Arbëria, still lives.

Reference

Author: Maximilian Lambertz (1922). Book title: Zwischen Drin und Vojusa