There is on MySpace an amazing Albanian song sung by a Men’s Group from Vlore in southern Albania. It comes out of an ancient traditon of polyphonic a’cappella singing. The person who posted the recording knows little about its background but loves its sound (as I do). I asked an Albanian woman I work with, and she told me it’s the legend of Rozafa, a foundational legend for the Albanian people. She thought it unusual that folk singers from southern Albania would sing a song about this northern location, since the musical traditions of the country are fragmented and parochial, but I get the sense that this legend in some deep way explains what it means to be Albanian.
A website describing the legend and the castle, which still stands as a ruin, describes the Albanian virtue of “Besa” thus:
“The Albanians Besa is most closely translated as the word of honor. It is something that is almost holy to the Albanians, and a true Albanian is supposed to keep his given Besa no matter what. There are many stories told about the Besa (many of which are probably true), but here is the most amazing one. Two young men got into a fight in a crowd in the streets, and one of them shot the other. He started to run away, but was chased by the ‘xhandar’ (old form of police forces in Balkans). He fled into a house and asked the woman who was there to hide him.
The woman gave him the Besa and hid him. The police forces soon came to the house and asked for the young man. In the middle of the conversation, the woman understood that they were chasing the young man she was hiding because of murder, and that he had shot her son. Yet, she had given the Besa, and she did not tell the police that the man who had shot her son was in the house.”
The legend goes like this:
There were three brothers who lived on a strategically important hill near the modern city of Skodra. They had heard news that the Turks were advancing toward them and wanted to build an impregnable castle to withstand the Turkish seige. They started building the castle, but every evening the walls they had built that day crumbled. They consulted a wise man who mysteriously appeared to them, and he said that a person would have to be walled into the building as a human sacrifice in order to propitiate the (spirits? gods?) and make the castle supernaturally strong.
In a preamble to the legend there was a cinderella-like story in which the three brothers chose wives. The older two ended up with dishonest conniving wives, but the youngest, whose heart was pure, won the heart of a pure honest woman named Rozafa, who could cook better than anyone else in the village.
The brothers agreed that whichever wife brought them lunch the next day would be sacrificed, and each promised not to tell his wife of the bargain. The unscrupulous brothers, of course, told their wives, but the honest brother kept his promise. The next day, when Rozafa brought lunch, she learned about the pact. She told her husband that she was pregnant and about to give birth, but that she would agree to be walled in if holes were left for her arm and her breast, so that she might hold and nurse the baby as she weakened and died. This was done, and the castle stood against all attackers for centuries. The aforementioned website adds a poem written by Rozafa:
I plead
When you wall me
Leave my right eye exposed
Leave my right hand exposed
Leave my right foot exposed
for the sake of my newborn son
so that when he starts crying
Let me see him with one eye
Let me caress him with one hand
Let me feed him with one breast
Let me rock his cradle with one foot
May the castle breast be walled
May the castle rise strong
May my son be happy
This was done, and that is why there is a stone in the castle from which, even today, milk flows.
Human sacrifice to make a building strong is an element in legends from all ower the world, particularly in the Indo-European speaking countries. Here is a website that lists some of them.