From old men sitting on porches retelling the same stories over and over (and somehow generating rolling laughs everytime), to the mothers telling spooky stories to keep their children in line—Cajuns have a seemingly inborn ability to keep listeners on the edge of their seat waiting for a big laugh or a frightening shudder.
One such example is the Cajun folk tale of Madame Grands Doigts [Lady Long Fingers].
But the odd thing about Madame is, depending on your family and where you grew up, she might make you laugh—or she might make you cry.
For Connie Thibodeaux Butler, Madame Grands Doigts was not a lady she wanted to meet. Growing up in St. Martinville, Connie’s family used the legend like many other Cajun families—to keep kids from getting into trouble. She was always told that Madame Grands Doigts was a mean, witch-like woman that lived in the attic of her Tante Moon’s house. If any kid were to step foot in the attic, Madame Grands Doigts would use her long, gnarled finders to grab and attack them. Naturally, Connie’s family didn’t want kids playing in the attic of an old home, and Madame Grands Doigts very effectively kept the children out of the attic—and scared out of their wits. Many years later when Connie was an adult and Tante Moon had passed on, she still couldn’t go in the attic of that old home in St. Martinville. She just knew Madame Grands Doigts was still living up there waiting to attack any interloper.
There is a tale of origin behind how the legend of an evil Madame Grands Doigts began.
According to Arnaudville native David Lanclos, there was a story about la fille aux belles mains [the young lady with beautiful hands]. This woman was the belle of the town, and all the men wanted to court her. Her popularity led to jealousy from all the other women in town, so one day they invited the woman to a party and put a gris-gris on her beautiful hands. The next morning when she awoke, her beautiful hands were gnarled and full of warts. Ashamed, she retreated to the attic of her house and never came down again. Later, the house burned down, killing the sad woman in the attic, and ever since then her ghost goes from home to home haunting other attics.
The Madame Grands Doigts known to many other Cajuns, however, isn’t evil at all, but a sweet, gift-giving woman. For Amanda LaFleur of Ville Platte, Madame Grands Doigts brought gifts to little children on Christmas Eve. In this version of the legend, she would use her long fingers to gently place little gifts in the stockings of good little girls and boys—a kind of Glenda the Good Witch for the many Cajuns that grew up with this version of the legend.
And as the legend has circled throughout the Cajun community over the years, it would seem that each family’s traditions determined if that legend was one to warm the hearts of little ones—or terrify them.
Whether scary or fun, the children of Acadiana are linked by a heritage of legendary story telling, that they will no doubt pass on themselves one day.
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