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This song became popular in 1848 after the expulsion of the Austrians from Milan and
was repeated with variations and additions in 1859 and 1866.^^ Its familiarity in a
Ticmese household expresses the support given by the Swiss to their Lombard
neighbours during the time of the Risorgimento. The second song is from a series of
verses which were repeated in many variations m aU of Lombardy and presumably in
Ticino. They were rhymes which accompanied a game in which a child would sit on
the knees of an adult then 'fall' down between the legs when the song stopped.^^ Of
antique origin, the version which was sung in the Lafranchi household appears to be
the foUowing which is stiU sung in Milan today:
Trott trett cavalett
su di pe gio di mott
tretta tretta cavallin
fa balla e me bel pinin.^"*
The meaning of the third song has been lost although individual words and phrases
suggest that it is a luUaby, 'Um bac ching a la ma mazel' possibly translating as: un
bacino alia mamma (a smaU kiss for your mother). While the songs might have been
sung within a variety of contexts, there were clearly times when the children were
present. Singing was just one of the ways in which the Lafranchis expressed affection
for their children. Andrea hated so much to be separated from them that once, when
he was iU and staying at the Golden City Hotel in Ballarat from where he had access to
medical treatment, he insisted that his littie daughter Giuseppina be brought across
regularly to visit him.^*
This may have been the same illness from which Andrea died in 1897 at 58
years of age. A great loss to both his family and the Blampied community, his
imposing headstone at the Eganstown Cemetery'^ was a monument to the affection.
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