Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, ?

Lousay Aube Carries on the Traiteur's Art of Helping People Heal Through Prayer

By Bernard Chaillot, Vermilion Bureau Editor

MEAUX--Sure, Lousay Aube is a gentleman and a scholar.

But he's also a traiteur.

The retired teacher and holder of a master's degree in education is carrying on the French Acadian folk tradition of treating common ailments through prayer and, in some treatments, the laying on of hands.

But it's strictly hands off when he treats for infertility, he said with a grin.

Aube, 74, said he grew up on the same land where he lives now with his wife of 29 years, the former Betty Melebeck. It's just down the road from the Meaux Mall. He said when he's not busy treating or substitute teaching, he and Betty like to square dance.

"People call me all hours of the day and night for treatments," he said. "It's all based on prayer and faith, not witchcraft. Don't call me a healer, like Swaggart and Oral Roberts. I don't tell people to send me all their money. I just try to help people by using the treatments I've been given. It's not a show."

Aube's standard treatment, whether for warts, sinus trouble, shingles, sleeplessness, snakebite, bad dreams, a burn or a broken heart, is to repeat a prayer in French, usually silently, sometimes while making the sign of the cross over the area of discomfort.

A traiteur does not have to be in the presence of the one being treated. Treatments can and often are given over the phone, Aube said.

He said he does not go in for home remedies, as some do, such as treating cold sores with earwax or a diaper rash with a poultice made from a dirt dauber's nest, although he knows of many cases of such remedies helping people.

"And I would never suggest that people stop seeing their doctor for medical problems," he said.

"A lot of the older French people swear by traiteurs, but I tell them to keep seeing their doctor and taking their medicine, and if they want, they can come see me too. Then they're covered both ways. I can't help everybody, but I won't hurt anybody."

Aube treated most of the audience at a recent "Living Traditions" folk arts program coordinated by USL folklorist Patricia Sawin at the Acadian Museum in Erath.

Brent Trahan, a young man treated for warts, and Lou Romaine, a senior citizen who was treated for a stiff neck and allergies, said they believe in the treatments for the simplest of reasons--because the treatments work for them.

Aube said the traiteur's art is accepted by the Catholic Church, as long as the treatments remain in a religious context. "I know Father Calais, who founded St. Theresa's in Abbeville, believes in it, because I cured his sinus problems," he said.

He said he doesn't dabble on the dark side with gris gris voodoo and "conjo," or conjurer's spells. "I know how to treat flour that you can sprinkle where the person you want will walk on it and he or she will never look at another, but I won't do it," he said.

"I tease LSU fans by saying I can put a gris gris on Alabama and make sure the Tigers win. They want to take me to the stadium, but I don't fool with all that," Aube said.

He said with a wink that he has helped women get pregnant-- through prayer -- when the women said doctors could offer no help through modern medicine.

"I have also treated people who said their cancer cells disappeared afterward, but I don't like to talk about that too much because too many people would expect miracles," Aube said. "Like I said, I'm not one of these faith healers. I'm just a country traiteur."

He said he first learned of the art in 1947, his first year of teaching, when he was conducting an oral history class at Kaplan High. "I asked the students to go talk to their parents and grandparents about folk traditions that had been passed down through the generations, and they came back with the most amazing stories," Aube said.

"I'd wanted to be a traiteur since I was 10 years old," he said. "My great-grandfather on my mother's side, Nicolas Hebert, had been a traiteur, and a cousin also, Otis Mire, but both died without passing on to me or anyone else the treatments they knew, because when you tell how to give a treatment, you can't treat for that particular ailment anymore, you lose it, and people don't want to lose that power. They want to hold on to it for as long as they can, so they wait until they've got one foot in the grave. That's why we're a dying breed. If you don't pass on the gift, it's lost."

One boy in the class gave Aube the treatment for warts. "He didn't want it, so he gave it to me. I tried it on another boy in the class who had warts, and the warts disappeared within two weeks, so I knew I had the power. I picked up more treatments from there."

Renee Adams of Kaplan gave Aube some treatments she was ready to pass on, then a Mrs. Roddy from Abbeville, who was in her 90s, gave him some others just before she died, Aube said, all orally, in French, "including one that she said was good for everything. She said she'd performed miracles with it. It's a good one."

Aube said a number of the prayers given to him by Adams contain a reference to a "Saint Nestor Guidry," a legendary crippled traiteur who lived in Nunez more than a century ago and is said to have performed many miracle cures, but will never be canonized "because he didn't get publicized. Otherwise, he would probably be a saint."

Superstition holds that male traiteurs must pass on treatments to females, and vice versa, that a body of running water cannot be between the traiteur and the one being treated and that an older person always passes on treatments to a younger one, Aube said.

He said he has disproved all three, but still abides by the traditions of not accepting pay or advertising his services. "If I charged $5 a treatment, I'd be rich," he said.

A person being treated also is not supposed to thank the traiteur, but leaving a small gift or donation is acceptable.

"My wife and I are always coming home and finding gifts under the carport, whether it be vegetables, a ham, some pralines, whatever," Aube said.

"I've been wanting to put up a little collection box to help me pay for my long distance calls to treat people, but Betty won't let me. I keep looking for a treatment for a woman's stubbornness, but I haven't found one yet," he laughed.

This article is copyrighted © by the Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser and is used with permission.  This web site was originated through a grant awarded to Carencro High School (Joel Hilbun/Bobbi Marino, Grant Administrators) by the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education from the Louisiana Quality Education Support Fund - 8(g).