"Le grand fouard"

This old tradition has already been done away with for a long time, although there have been many attempts to bring it to life again. Older people in Malmedy remember to have experienced renewed glimmers of attempts in the 1920s, when young men with music in their heads and ‘love in the air,’ dressed in top hats and tailcoats, brought a bag of waffles to the homes of the young girls with whom they had flirted during the carnival.

Since the 1990s this tradition has emerged again in a slightly modified form. Two groups, consisting of members of the choirs “L`union Wallonne” and “La Malmédienne,” form a procession through the streets of the town on the Sunday after the carnival. However, these groups no longer consist of the “lady-killers” of the old days; they are now just simple “Ambassadors” of their respective associations, who distribute waffles as thanks for the services performed during the “Cwarmê.”