Note 131 — Little Dictionary of Creole Proverbs.

This proverb is the retort for the phrase: “So much the worse for you.” Sometimes one might hear a colored servant for example, warning the children of the house to keep out of the kitchen, which in Creole residences usually opens into the great court-yard where the little ones play: Eh, pitis! faut pas restér là: vous ka casser tout! (“Hey! little ones, musn’t stay there: you’ll break everything!”) If the father or mother should then exclaim “Tant pis pour eux!”—so much the worse for them if they do break everything, you would hear the old woman reply: “Tant-pis n’a pas cabane!”—“So-much-the-worse has no cabin”—i.e., nothing to lose. She believes in an ounce of prevention rather than a pound of cure.