Round Grey Pebbles

Marsalforn revisited

The very popular bay of Marsalforn in the north of Gozo was also known as Il-Qala ta’ Marsalforn (Marsalforn Creek), Il-Qala ta’ San Pawl (St Paul’s Creek), and Il-Bajja ta’ Marsalforn (Marsalforn Bay). Tradition also associates it with St Paul’s stay in the Maltese Islands.

Joe Zammit Ciantar writes

This harbour has been used for anchorage since antiquity; it is the first harbour seen by sea craft approaching the islands from the north.

The name features in a notarial deed as early as 1486. It is a composite name, made up of Semitic ‘marsa’ (place good for anchorage) and Romance ‘forn’, apparently immediately derived from Italian forno, which today means ‘oven / bakery’.

Childhood memoirs

This was the bay my family used to go to for swimming in my childhood days.

I was brought up in Rabat – we Gozitans rarely, if ever, refer to Gozo’s capital by the legal name ‘Victoria’, which officially replaced ‘Rabat’ in 1887, on the occasion of the Golden Jubilee of England’s Queen Victoria – in the middle of the island. My family had no summer residence by the seaside so I became acquainted with the bay as I grew up.

When still a child my mother used to take us five children by bus to this bay. Our father was always at work at the Magna tad-Dawl (‘Electricity Machine’, the name used by Gozitans for a small power station) in Rabat, or at home repairing a clock, a radio, or just doing something else. I never remember him ever coming with us to the seaside when we were young. We used to go in the afternoon, taking with us the usual towels and bathing costumes, a qoffa (‘wicker basket’) filled with slices of Maltese bread, some tomatoes, oil, and capers, because ‘il-baħar jiftaħlek l-aptit’ (the sea air sharpens the appetite) and ‘it-tfal dejjem bil-ġu[’ (children are always hungry). Her favourite place –both for its seclusion and safe shallow waters – was the pebbly beach just beyond Il-Menqa, on the side of Ghar Qawqla, beneath the heights on the right-hand side of the bay. There we used to spend hours swimming and playing with anything in the water, until il-mà (‘mother’) would start calling us, one by one, to change into our clothes and return home by the last bus to Rabat at 6 or perhaps 7pm.

I remember I had a small pen-knife with which I used to pick tasty imħar (limpets) and I still curse the day I lost it among the pebbles that still abound in that area.

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