Well, the Haitian tooth fairy is actually a rat.
In Haiti, when children lose a tooth, they throw the tooth on the roof of their house and say, 'Rat, rat, rat! I am throwing you a beautiful tooth, send me a bad tooth'. Rat, rat, rat! Men yon bèl dan m voye pou ou, voye yon move dan pou mwen.
The belief is if to trick the tooth-hungry rat into accepting the bad tooth so that the child may grow the tooth back. If the child doesn't grow a tooth, then the rat didn't buy into the lie :)
Haitian Creole ↔ English Reference, Look up Haitian Creole and English Words
In Haiti, when children lose a tooth, they throw the tooth on the roof of their house and say, 'Rat, rat, rat! I am throwing you a beautiful tooth, send me a bad tooth'. Rat, rat, rat! Men yon bèl dan m voye pou ou, voye yon move dan pou mwen.
The belief is if to trick the tooth-hungry rat into accepting the bad tooth so that the child may grow the tooth back. If the child doesn't grow a tooth, then the rat didn't buy into the lie :)
Haitian Creole ↔ English Reference, Look up Haitian Creole and English Words
Interesting...:) What if the tooth comes back to you from the roof, does that mean that the rat did not accept it?
ReplyDeleteYou know, I don't remember ever having a tooth come back to me. If that had happened I would have thrown it back on the roof. I had a thatched roof, so mines always disappeared into the dried vegetation at the first try. We were brought to believe that if you don't throw the tooth at the 'rat', it won't grow back.
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