Fenesta Vascia (low window) is a popular and ancient Neapolitan song, from 1500, at the time when

Naples Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adminis ...

was part of the

Spanish Empire The Spanish Empire ( es, link=no, Imperio español), also known as the Hispanic Monarchy ( es, link=no, Monarquía Hispánica) or the Catholic Monarchy ( es, link=no, Monarquía Católica) was a colonial empire governed by Spain and its prede ...

. Its description as "Calascionata" indicates it was to be accompanied by a calascione, a large

lute A lute ( or ) is any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back enclosing a hollow cavity, usually with a sound hole or opening in the body. It may be either fretted or unfretted. More specifically, the term "lute" can ref ...

. The lyrics are in

Neapolitan language , altname = , states = Italy , region = Abruzzo, Apulia, Basilicata, Calabria, Campania, Lazio, Marche, Molise , ethnicity = ''Mezzogiorno'' Ethnic Italians , speakers = 5.7 million , date ...

, in a

hendecasyllabic In poetry, a hendecasyllable (sometimes hendecasyllabic) is a line of eleven syllables. The term may refer to several different poetic meters, the older of which are quantitative and used chiefly in classical (Ancient Greek and Latin) poetry, and ...

meter and the author is unknown. At the beginning of 1800,

Giulio Genoino Giulio Genoino (born c. 1565 in Cava de' Tirreni), the 'mind of Masaniello', was a key figure in the Neapolitan Republic (1647), 7 July 1647 popular insurrection against Habsburg authority in the Kingdom of Naples. Biography A priest, lawyer, an ...

adapted the words to the dialect of his time, and Guglielmo Cottrau wrote the music, which was entirely different from the original melody.

Lyrics

The lyrics are very poetic, and talk about a lover who waits in vain for his cruel beloved to show up at her window. He then mentions his will to become a street water seller, and he says that the water he will sell will not be actual water, but it will be his tears of love. The lyrics have been noted to be difficult to translate into English, in that the original Neapolitan phrasing which is both passionate and sweet may be perceived as harsh and cold in English.

References

External links

Translated lyrics in English
16th-century songs Italian folk songs Neapolitan songs Year of song unknown {{song-stub