Beloved literary friar celebrates 45th birthday

Charles Casha - who first gave birth to the Fra Mudest character in a 1967 edition of the magazine Children's Own - flags up the genteel element of the Fra Mudest stories as one of the reasons why the character has remained a cross-generational favourite amongst Maltese readers.

"According to what many readers have told me, the simplicity and humour found in the stories appeals to all: young and old. But principally, it's the character himself who seems to have struck a chord in people's hearts," Casha said.

The genesis of the character was both personal, and accidental. Drawing on his own experience of witnessing friars going around the Maltese islands - "quite a few years back, these friars were a common sight in Malta and Gozo, going around the village asking of alms" - Casha dreamt up the character after the editor of Children's Own tasked him with creating a story based on the name 'Fra Mudest'.

"It was a one-story commission, originally, and the name was supplied by the editor. I was given carte blanche as to how the character and the story were to develop. Instinctively, since I was born and raised in Marsa - where there was a community of monks - I based the characters on what was familiar to me."

Casha's Fra endeared himself to readers thanks to his humble and well-meaning - though often accident-prone - manner.

Most of the stories hinge on harmless incidents and misunderstandings. In one story, for example, Fra Mudest gets into a panic because he misunderstands an Irish visitor to the convent when he says that 'the cock is dead' - understanding the accented speech to mean 'the cook is dead'. In another, the Fra accidentally drops some food on the Pirjol's new habit, and promises to wash it by the evening.

But matters are only made worse when Fra Mudest burns the habit as he's ironing it - and his solution only leads to more trouble after he tries to replace the damaged outfit with another that was left behind by another monk, but that proves to be too short.

Asked whether he believes the Fra Mudest stories remain relevant both to children nowadays, and in light of recent developments in the publishing industry, Casha - who has won five awards during his five-decade career - suggested that perhaps, it is the nostalgic nature of the stories that helps them survive throughout changing cultural attitudes and literary trends.

"The stories themselves illustrate life in a small community, which is something that children today are not that familiar with, and so they provide a similar effect to reading a fairy tale. On the other hand, I've often seen children bring over a tattered copy of Fra Mudest which used to belong to their parents. It seems that quite a lot of people hang on to books they loved in their childhood..."

University lecturer and President of the National Book Council of Malta Gorg Mallia described Fra Mudest as heralding in "the birth of modern literature for Maltese children", and attributed the stories' popularity to their genteel milieu - which he compares to the post-war writings of the British author PG Wodehouse, whose characters (Jeeves and Wooster being his most popular) similarly appear to be stuck in a nostalgic era free of any real danger save for minor social embarrassment.

"Fra Mudest follows the traditional gahan character, who is a staple of Maltese folk writings," Mallia said, citing George Zammit's Wenzu u Rozi and Trevor Zahra's Kuncett u Marinton as worthy counterparts.

"I think that Fra Mudest came at a seminal time in the inception of children's literature in Malta and, coupled with the fact that Charles Casha has a good way with prose, the character struck a chord and has remained an iconic presence in that genre," Mallia said, while adding that "the Maltese also like a good laugh, and the more undemanding the reason for the laughter, the better."