His authentic tales come from his grandmother.
The author of “Contes et Légendes de Sixt-Fer-à-Cheval et de la Vallée du Haut- Giffre” enjoys captivating us with his wonderful gift for writing and narration.
Jean-François Deffayet brings to life a whole little magical world. Ghosts, witches and devils are the characters of his tales that also feature the fairies of Fer-à-Cheval.
Did you know that they teach mere mortals the art of making the local tomme cheese?
Meet an expert storyteller from Haut-Giffre.
Storytelling is an ancestral art, an oral tradition that was passed on to him by his grandparents when they used to work in the fields as farmers, and during family walks and evening get-togethers.
Jean-François tells stories as naturally as he lives and breathes, after growing up amid the legends of the valley. The village elders would whisper in his ear their stories, memories and legends. Some even entrusted him with some real gems, like those old people from Sixt who used to tend cattle at Le Frenalay in the Fer-à-Cheval Cirque.
“They gave me a notebook in which they had written legends, and told me “not to lose them, otherwise they would be lost forever”. I kept that notebook safe and sound,” the memory collector tells us.
From these legends based on mountain secrets, he writes his own stories while remaining loyal to their original spirit. A verbal legacy that he in turn passes on to the valley’s residents and visitors during storytelling walks and evenings in Sixt-Fer-à-Cheval, in both summer and winter, as he has done for the past 15 years since he first tested them as a holiday camp manager.
“During a storytelling activity, I present my role before telling the first story. I recount 4 or 5 legends during a nature walk of about 1½ hours when we explore the habitat and heritage amid stories about the villages and the adventurers of our mountains, before returning by torchlight. The magic operates! The evening activities take place indoors around the fireplace, in a mountain chalet, just like those I experienced as a child. We’re surrounded by ancient objects and I dress up in traditional costume. It’s a trip back in time!” confides Jean-François Deffayet, an officially recognised “Pays de Savoie Storyteller”. Because a storyteller needs to have heard the legends, listened carefully, and collected them, just as the writer has been doing with great enthusiasm for the past 20 years.
At Sixt-Fer-à-Cheval, as in the entire Haut-Giffre Valley, there’s no shortage of legends!
“The waterfalls, caves, lakes, peaks and forests are the basic ingredients that go into the recipe for a legend. My stories are based on real-life places, people and practices: fairies who know all about mountain plants and can stop blood, pain or fire, wizards and witches who are masters in hypnosis, plants and black magic, magicians, “charvants”, cheeky elves, trolls who live near the lakes and in the woods, and giants…,” Jean- François Deffayet recounts, just as he does during the activities that he even exports to the rest of France, and in his books.
The most famous is “Contes et Légendes de Sixt-Fer-à-Cheval et la Vallée du Giffre”, and his latest publication is “Contes et Légendes des Vallées Savoyardes”, published last September by Editions les Passionnées de Bouquins with a foreword by Patrick Breuzé, another fan of the region and legends of Haut-Giffre.
Interview by Laure Béchade, journalist
Photo by Gérard Gachignard