The predominant anti-hero in Maltese folk narrative is Ġaħan. He is the wise fool, popular with one and all in contemporary Malta. He is the epitome of Maltese verbal wisdom and humor. The subjective and definite coloring of Ġaħan’s anecdotes is imbued with typical Mediterranean narrators’ humor, which often takes the form of a negative tendency. But it is a tendency that springs from the inclination and will to laugh at oneself and the world at large, an ironical bent toward contradiction and debunking. Humor is not only a device to uphold interest in the tale. It also facilitates the comprehension of the progression of events, thus heightening effectiveness and efficiency of the narration.

Due to lack of scientific fieldwork research, many in Malta openly declare and write in their “desk analyses” that Ġaħan is dead, thus giving no attention to ethnic or native analysis, framing him as a “light-headed” fool and his anecdotes, brimming with sagacity, slyness, guiles, cheats and deceits, have been defined as stupidities by a Maltese academic. There has been a historical undercurrent since the first half of the twentieth century that, through children’s literature, has manipulated and bowdlerized the discursive richness of Maltese folk culture on Ġaħan. It is the aim of this paper to show how through my research and publications I strongly disagree with this pseudo-scientific assertion that has been crystallized in Maltese, the native language of the Maltese archipelago.