This track is one of the best in the album because it
is sung in the dialect from Catania, her dialect. It is neither Italian nor my
dialect, so I wouldn’t understand it if I didn’t read the translation myself.
Thus this is not my translation, yet I felt like putting it here because I am
amazed by this song, I hope you will too.
Actually I had that translated while chatting to a guy
from Catania and now that I have an idea on the text, I dared rearrange the
version you can find on the site www.carmenconsoli.nl
(a very nice site: it proves her fame arrived even in the Netherlands!). I’m
not Sicilian though, so I may be wrong!
«Be careful not to fall down!»
His mother-in-law told him.
He thought: «I’d better hurry up
Because she’s bringing me bad luck.»
«You’re too high and the ladder won’t resist,
Climb down the tree, Tom, be careful!»
«You’re too high and the ladder won’t resist,
Climb down the tree, Tom, be careful!»
Dressed in black, in bright sunshine,
The mother-in-law shouted:
«Tom, be careful! If you fall down
you’ll get hurt!» He thought:
«What an evil eye!»
«You’re too high and the ladder won’t resist,
Climb down the tree, Tom, be careful!»
«You’re too high and the ladder won’t resist,
Climb down the tree, Tom, be careful!»
«You’re too high and the ladder won’t resist,
Climb down the tree, Tom, be careful!»
«You’re too high and the ladder won’t resist,
Climb down the tree, Tom, be careful!»
Both for his mother-in-law’s cry
And for himself being bad placed,
The ladder broke…
But he stayed on the tree
Hanging and a fine
Cherry fell to the ground.
… The fine cherry, red and sweet.
… The fine cherry, red and sweet.
Notes: Masinu is the Sicilian short form for
Tommaso, here translated into Tom. As Daniele writes in the site mentioned
above, «according to the archaic Southern Italian point of view, the
mother-in-law is a sort of evil, grotesque witch who brings bad luck: she is
plum, ugly, old.»… And, ahem, I do think not even the people from Catania, or
at least the young ones, understand the lyrics completely… because strangely
enough everyone gives a different meaning to some words!