Front cover of Conrad Fenech’s new book.

The humorous and irreverent marriage contract read out during Carnival celebrations 250 years ago has been updated, complete with references to Arriva, the Chinese investment in Enemalta and the popular book Fifty Shades of Grey.

The new version of the contract, or qarċilla, was launched at a well-attended discussion organised by the Department of Maltese, where a book about the original 1760 contract was presented.

The original qarċilla was written by Cospicua-born priest Feliċ Demarco and is laden with humour and sexual connotations. It also makes reference to social poverty and the rivalry between the town and folkspeople. Qarċilla actually means a ring-cake that was donated to a priest together with a bottle of wine by a bride and her groom in medieval times.

This burlesque marriage contract, which is similar to a dowry, lists the things that the fiancé and fiancée have to give each other.

It is read in front of a couple dressed up as the bride and groom-to-be, by someone pretending to be a notary, who is pelted with talcum powder, eggs, confetti and food.

This once-popular play, called Iż-Żwieġ la Maltija, used to be read in Valletta and villages, and was rewritten every year until 1991 where it was read out in Xagħra, Gozo, as documented by Prof. Vicki Ann Cremona.

The launch of the book by Conrad Fenech about the first qarċilla and the new version of the marriage contract was held at the National Library in Valletta, in front of which it was read at the end of the century, according to 18th century paintings.

Fr Demarco speaks of attacks by the Turks, for example, while I speak of parliament debates and soap operas

“Through the publication, the Department of Maltese wants to rekindle interest in the qarċilla because it is, essentially, a literary activity. We feel we have to take care of it and launch it again within our culture,” lecturer Olvin Vella told this newspaper.

So the department, led by Bernard Micallef, asked author Trevor Żahra to write a qarċilla for next year, and will hold discussions with the Carnival Committee.

Riddled with topical issues like the ministers’ increase in salaries, the children’s allowance and income tax, Mr Zahra notes that the groom has to protect the bride all the time, and follow her with a fire extinguisher aboard a public bus.

“The humour of the 1760 qarċilla had to be made more topical. Fr Demarco speaks of attacks by the Turks, for example, while I speak of Parliament debates and soap operas,” Mr Zahra said.

The author kept the same rhyme and “spirit” of the original.

“So while in the original the bride was given a storage trunk without the top, bottom and sides, the 2014 bride will be given an Armier boathouse,” he added.

The new qarċilla includes sexual innuendos, just like the original one – something which the Maltese audience is quite used to, Mr Zahra said.

In the meantime, in his book about the 1760 contract, which was published by Horizons, Mr Fenech built on the work of Ġużè Cassar Pullicino, who found the original one, and research by the late Ġorġ Mifsud Chircop.

Cassar Pullicino had published a few excerpts of it during the Second World War, as he felt he could not publish sections that included vulgar language.

In his publication, Mr Fenech reproduces the qarċilla as it was written by Fr Demarco in old Maltese, and translates it into modern Maltese. He includes six other published qrieċel and a biography about the author.

One of the speakers at the launch, William Zammit, noted that the coccania and qarċilla were the major carnival events that allowed the Maltese, thronging to Valletta in their thousands, to become protagonists, with their social superiors assuming a spectator role.

At the same time, the devotional side of carnival, with churches open for prayer, sermons and the performance of plays with a spiritual theme, attempted to counterbalance the “evils” of the transient Carnival escapade from a harsh and repressive reality.

The head of the Department of Maltese, Dr Micallef, pointed out that this burlesque marriage contract must have sounded as a verbal extension of the bizarre masks flocking around it.

“The qarċilla emulates the topsy-turvy world of the carnival in theatrical form, and achieves one of the fundamental paradoxes of all grotesque art: laughter at the expense of a human nature seen as a series of paradoxes, all combined within a single bizarre caricature full of sexual and social innuendo.”