Quandu avrachiu oziu di ride.
Eo collu per le Calanche
Falgu per la Santa Croce,
Sempre chiamand uvi, vabu:
Rispunditemi una voce.
Mi l'hanu crucifissatu
Cume Ghesù Cristu in croce.
I have added the original text of this vocero, to give the reader some idea of the Corsican dialect, and enable him to compare it, if he is interested in such matters, with the Italian spoken on the Continent. I find a great resemblance between the dialect of Corsica and that used by the lower orders in Rome, particularly in Trastevere.[K] All the Italian popular dialects, however, have a tendency to drop or mutilate the infinitive endings, are and ire, and to substitute r for l. The Corsican says soretra for sorella. Philologists have pronounced the Corsican one of the purest of the Italian dialects, and Tommaseo especially has much to say in its praise in his collection of Tuscan, Corsican, and Greek popular songs—which contains also, though in a defective form, a number of Corsican dirges, with elucidations. In this book he calls the Corsican dialect "a powerful language, and of all the dialects of the Italian tongue, one of the most thoroughly Italian." It seems to me to be genuine gold compared with the patois of the Piedmontese and Lombards, and the dialects of Parma and Bologna. Even from the single specimen communicated, the reader will see that the language of the Corsicans, though no doubt one of the lower forms of Italian, is soft and graceful.