Sunday, 1 April 2018

Corfu, Old photos; William Barnes on Parga (Views of Labour and Gold); Sir Woodbine Parish on Corfu, Parga, Sir Thomas Maitland, Ali Pasha







Old Postcard (above)


 In Skyros

William Barnes on Parga (1859): 

"The fetching of water from springs we deem well taken off our women’s hands by wells, pumps, or waterworks, and yet the minds of many travellers have been charmed by the beauty and graceful gait of water-fetching girls in other lands. Sir Woodbine Parish has told of the winning comeliness in figure and gait of the women a Parga, a village in Greece, where they fetch water on their heads from a  spring a mile or more from home”.


More on Sir Woodbine Parish (The Spectator Archive) : "Next year he found himself in Corfu on the Staff of that whimsical despot, Sir Thomas Maitland, the High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands. His duties took him into Albania, and one of the best of his letters describes his journey to Yanina and his interview with the famous "Lion" of that ilk, Ali Pasha".

"In 1816 he was sent to the Ionian Islands, and was employed by Sir Thomas Maitland, the lord high commissioner, with Mr. Cartwright (afterwards consul-general at Constantinople), in arranging with Ali Pasha of Yanina in Albania the cession of Parga and the indemnities for the Parganots".


Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 43, Wikisource


For the full text and much more about Sir Woodbine's role in Corfu and Parga, see Chapter V of A Life of Sir Woodbine Parish by The Hon, Nina, I. Kay Shuttleworth (1910)

Sample pages:







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