Gade yon kado Remi jwenn / Remi's magical gift: Mancy's Haitian Folktale Collection

Mancy's Haitian Folktale Collection is a series of 10 folktales reproduced on these pages to memorialize the wonderful stories told by my mother, Mrs. Hermance (Mancy) Garçon. A single mother, she devoted her many talents and her life to me, her only child. Thank you, Mom!


In the past, Haitian-Creole was only a spoken language, and these stories were only told out loud. Today, Haitian-Creole is, along with French, an official language in Haiti, and is also taught abroad. I am, therefore, using such innovation to publish a selected few of my mother's favorite folktales to continue her wondrous legacy by reaching out to a much larger audience. Each story ends with a salient moral. May the voice of the Haitian storyteller never stop!


These stories belong to no one in particular. Rather, these stories are a part of the soul and the spirit of a nation and its peoples. As my experience, they have been passed on orally by my great-great grandmother to my grandmother, who, in turn, told my mother.


It is with great pleasure that I am sharing the third of Mancy's Haitian Folktale Collection “Father Misery”, lovingly presented from my mother's repertoire. Look for more to come…