Music Video: Manunura - Mi Votu E Mi Rivotu

Mi Votu E Mi Rivotu (I Turn and Turn)
performed by Manunura

This is one of the most beautiful love songs of Sicilian folk music. Famously known after the rendition by Sicilian singer Rosa Balistreri, she claimed to have heard this song sing for the first time inside the prison of Palermo, and has attributed to a prisoner the composition. In reality the lyrics of this song are very old and arise in many traditional Sicilian songs. It appeared in the collection that Lionardo Vigo Calanna, Marquis of Gallodoro, published in 1870 under the title "Raccolta Amplissima di Canti Siciliani", produced after a 20-year-long work of research and collection.

English lyrics:

I turn and turn again sighing
I spend whole nights awake
I admire your beauty
and see the whole night pass until dawn
Because of you now I no longer sleep
My aching heart has no more peace
Do you know when I'll leave you?
When my life ends and I'll die
 
O dove, walking along the seashore,
stop that I must ask you a couple words
stop so I can take a plume off your wings
to write letters to my love.
I write you letters, two, three
But never a reply from you I receive
Have you not paper to write
or you cannot write?
I turn and turn again sighing
I spend whole nights without sleeping