The Legend of 'Speranza' Chapel, Mosta (Il-Leggenda tal-Isperanza)

Introduction: Setting the scene

1. Who were the corsairs?

In the 16th century there were many pirates sailing the Mediterranean Sea. These pirates were known as The Barbary Corsairs. They were officers of the growing Ottoman Empire and they sailed out of the ports of North Africa. The corairs often attacked Christian ships. They took the crew as slaves and stole the merchandise. Everybody was afraid of the pirates.
Malta was often attacked by corsairs. The Maltese people were really afraid of them because they destroyed private property, stole crops and took people as slaves. Whenever the locals saw the pirates land on the island, they ran away to safe places. Very often people ran to the City of Mdina and hid behind its big walls.

Adapted from:

Picture taken from: Il-Leggenda ta' Wied Speranza; Klabb Kotba Maltin

2. The Maltese Country Folk.

The country folk in Malta lived in the villages close to their fields. Most of these simple folk worked the fields from sunrise to sunset. Some of them kept animals especially sheep and goats on their farms.
Everybody in the family helped in the fields and at home.
School was not compulsory before 1946. Therefore, many children did not go to school but stayed at home to help their parents.
The sheep and goats provided milk, wool and meat for these families.
A very common scene in Maltese village and town streets was that of a farmer walking his sheep along the streets. People came out with their jugs and the farmer milked the goat or sheep straight into their jug. It couldn't be fresher than that!
Not many people boiled the milk before drinking it. For this reason, many Maltese suffered from the very infectious disease called Maltese fever or Brucellosis.

The Legend of 'Speranza' Chapel, Mosta

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttO4Hp9mok0&feature=emb_logo

Tasks.

1. Follow the text below as you watch the video.

_______________________________________________________________

In the year 1750, a family from Mosta was harvesting their fields in Burmarrad.

Unexpectedly, they were attacked by the Turks.

They ran back to the centre of the town.

Exhausted, the twenty year-old girl stopped in a cave nearby.

She prayed to the Virgin Mary for salvation.

The Turks searched high-and-low to find her but they found nothing but a cave full of cobwebs.

They assumed she wouldn't have been able to get in without breaking the cobwebs.

When they left she built a church in the exact place where she had found shelter.

Task 2:

Hover the cursor over the text and look up any words that you do not know using the dictionaries in CLILstore.

Task 3:

In groups, work out the Half Crossword, provided by the teacher.

Task 4:

Go to learning apps in the green buttons and put the sentences in the right sequence to create the legend.

Teacher's notes:

In this unit the trainees will:

1. understand how some legends reflected the life experiences of the Maltese people;

2. work together to create the legend;

3. practise using the regular past simple verbs as part of the lesson that complements this unit.