Basque Legends; With an Essay on the Basque Language

“Ay, ay, ay!—spare my life!”

He asks him,

“How many are you there where you live?”

“We were seven, but at present we are five with me.”

And he gives him a little blow, and he falls stiff and dead. And in five days he kills all the bears in the same way; and when he saw the last one come, he was frightened to see a beast so immense and so fearful, and which came dragging himself along, he was so old. He says to him,

“Why have you come into these parts?”

And at the same time the shepherd gives him a little blow. He begins to cry out to him to spare his life, and that he would give him great riches and beautiful apartments, and that they should live together. He spares his life, and sends the flock back to the house. They go through hedges and hedges, and “through the fairies’ holes,”33 and arrive at last at a fine palace. There they find the table set out with every kind of food and drink. There were also servants to attend on them, and there were also horses all ready saddled, and with harness of gold and silver. There was nothing but riches there. After having passed some days there like that, our shepherd said to himself that it would be better to be master and owner of all that fortune. So he gives a blow to the bear, and kills him stark dead.

After having dressed himself splendidly, he gets on horseback, and goes from country to country, and comes to a city, and hears the bells sounding, dilin-don, dilin-don, and all the people are in excitement. He asks, “What is the matter?” They tell him how that there is in the mountain a serpent with seven heads, and that one person must be given to him every day. This serpent has seven heads. They draw lots to know who must be given to the serpent. The lot had fallen on the king’s daughter, and every one was in grief and distress, and all were going, with the king at their head, to accompany her to the mountain. They left her at the foot of the mountain, and she went on mounting alone to the top. This young man goes after her, and says to her,

“I will accompany you.”

The king’s daughter says to him,

“Turn back, I beg you. I do not wish you to risk your life because of me.”

He says to her,

“Have no fear for me. I have a charm of might.”

At the same time they hear an extraordinary noise and hissing, and he sees the serpent coming like the lightning. As our man has his stick with him, he gives him a little blow on one of his heads, and one by one the seven heads fall off, and our princess is saved.

In order to go to the mountain, she was dressed in her most beautiful robes. She had seven of them on. He took a little piece from each of the seven robes, and he likewise takes the tongue from each of the heads, and puts them in these little pieces of silk. He then takes the king’s daughter on his horse, and descends the mountain. The daughter goes home to her father, and our gentleman to the bear’s house. The news that the seven-headed serpent is killed spreads quickly. The king had promised his daughter, and the half of his kingdom, to the man who should have killed him. The serpent was killed, as we have said. Three charcoal-burners, passing by on the mountain, see the serpent, and take the seven heads, and go to the king, asking to have a reward. But, as they were three, they were in a difficulty; and they were sent away until the council was assembled, and to see if any other person would come. As nobody appeared, they were going to draw lots who should be the husband of the king’s daughter. There was great excitement that day, and there was also a great stir when this young man arrived in the city. He asks what it is. They tell him what it is. He was splendidly dressed, and had a magnificent horse. He asks to see the king, and, as he was handsomely dressed, he is received immediately. He asks if the seven heads of the serpent had seven tongues in them; and they cannot find them. Then he shows the seven tongues. He sends, too, for the princess’ seven robes, and he shows the seven pieces that are wanting, as well as the seven tongues. When they see that, all exclaim—

“This is the true saviour of the king’s daughter!”

And they are married.

The three charcoal-burners, after having been dressed in a coat of sulphur, were burnt alive in the midst of the market-place.

Our gentleman and lady lived very happily, sometimes at her father’s house and at other times at their own bear’s-house; and, as they had lived well, they died happily. Then I was there, and now I am here.

Our next tale will show the serpent in a new character, and might have been included under the variations of “Beauty and the Beast.”

The Serpent in the Wood

Like many others in the world, there was a widower who had three daughters. One day the eldest said to her father, that she must go and see the country. She walked on for two hours, and saw some men cutting furze, and others mowing hay.

She returned to the house, astonished at having seen such wonderful things. She told her father what wonderful things she had seen, and her father replied:

“Men cutting furze! Men mowing hay!!”

The second daughter asks, too, to go like her sister, and she returned after having seen the same things. And the third daughter said that she ought to go, too.

“Child, what will you see?”

“I, like my sisters, something or other.”

She set off on the same road as the others; and she, like the others, saw men cutting furze, and men mowing hay. She went on further, and she saw some washerwomen; and she went still a little further on till she had walked for three hours, and she saw some wood-cutters cutting firewood. She asked them if she should see anything more if she went a little further. They told her that she would see some more wood-cutters cutting firewood.

She went very much farther into the wood, and she was caught, and kept prisoner by a serpent. She remained there crying, and not able to eat anything; and she remained like that eight days, very sad; then she began to grow resigned, and she remained there three years. At the end of three years she began to wish to return home. The serpent told her to come back again at the end of two days; that his time was nearly finished, and that he was a king’s son condemned for four years34 (to be a serpent). He gave her a distaff and spindle, of silver-gilt, and a silk handkerchief. He said to her:

“If you do not find me here on your return, you will have to wear out seven pairs of shoes, six of leather and one pair of iron ones (before you will be able to find me).”

When she came home, her father would not let her go back to the house where she had passed such a long time with a son of a king, condemned to be a serpent. She said that his time was almost finished, and that in gratitude she ought to return; that he had said that he would marry her. The father had her put in prison, confined in a room very high up. The fourth day she escaped, and went to the place, but she did not find the king’s son. She had already shoes on her feet. She had almost worn them out. After that she bought another pair. She kept journeying on and on, and asking if it were far, and they told her that it was very far. She bought still another pair of shoes, and these, too, got worn out on the road. She bought a fifth pair, and after them the sixth also. She then asked if she were near yet, and they told her that she was still very far. Then she bought the seventh pair of shoes, of iron. And when she had gone a short way in these shoes, she asked if it were far from there to the son of the king. The seventh pair of shoes were almost worn out when she came to a city, and heard sounds of music. She inquired what was happening in the city.

“Such a king’s son is being married to-day.”

She went to the house, and knocked at the door. A servant came.

“What do you want?”

She asked if there were any work to spin, and she would spin it.

And the servant went to tell it to the mistress. The lady ordered the servant to bring her in. She brought her in. And when she was in the kitchen, she showed the silk handkerchief which the king’s son had given her; and she began to blow her nose with that. The lady was quite astonished to see the girl blow her nose with such a beautiful handkerchief, as if it were nothing,35 when her son had one just like it for his marriage-day. So she told her son, when he came back from the church, that she had a spinster who came from a great distance, and said to him:

“She has a silk handkerchief just like yours!”

And the king’s son said to his mother:

“I, too, must see this spinster that you have there.” And he began to go there.

And his mother said to him,

“But why must you see her?”

“I wish to see her.”

He went to the kitchen, and in his presence she used her silk handkerchief.

He said to her,

“Show me that.”

She said to him,

“It is too dirty to put into your hands, sir.”

The gentleman says to her,

“I wish to see it, and show it to me.”

(Then) he recognised the young girl. She showed him (too) the distaff and spindle.

At table, when everybody was engaged telling stories, this king said:

“I also have a story to tell.”

Everybody was silent, and turned to look at him, and he said:

“Formerly, I had a key to a chest of drawers, and I lost it, and had a new one made. (After that, I found the old one.)”

And he turned to his wife:

“Should I use the old one or the new one?”

And she replied:

“If the first was a good one, why should you make use of the new one?”

Then he gave her this answer:

“Formerly, I had a wife, and now I have taken you. I leave you, and take the former one. Do you go off, then, to your own house.”

Gagna-haurra Hirigaray.

(Learnt at Guethary.)

For the version of the Heren-Suge tales which most closely approaches the Gaelic, see below, “Keltic Legends,” “The Fisherman and his Sons,” p. 87.

III.—Animal Tales

We give two stories as specimens of animal tales, which are neither allegories, nor fables, and still less satires. The reader must remember the phrase, “This happened when animals and all things could talk.” So thoroughly is this believed, that the first tale of this class recited to us completely puzzled us. The animals are in them placed so fully on a footing with human beings—not in the least as our “poor relations,” but rather as sharper-witted, and quite as happy and well off as ourselves—that it is difficult at times to determine whether it is the beast or the man who is the speaker.

Of the latter part of our first story we have heard many variations. In one given by M. Cerquand, p. 29, note,36 the fox is represented by Basa-Jauna; in a version from Baigorry, by the Tartaro; but in three others, from separate localities, he is a fox. The first two truths are the same in all the versions. In that here given, the fun is heightened by the fox talking and lisping throughout like a little child. All these versions we take to be merely fragments of a much longer story.

In M. Cerquand’s “The Chandelier of St. Sauveur,” p. 22, the hero’s name is Acherihargaix—“the fox difficult to be caught;” and we suspect that he, too, was originally merely an animal.

Acheria, the Fox

One day a fox was hungry. He did not know what to think. He saw a shepherd pass every day with his flock, and he said to himself that he ought to steal his milk and his cheese, and to have a good feast; but he needed some one to help him in order to effect anything. So he goes off to find a wolf, and he says to him,

“Wolf, wolf! we ought to have a feast with such a shepherd’s milk and cheese. You, you shall go to where the flocks are feeding, and from a distance you must howl, ‘Uhur, uhur, uhur.’ The man, after having milked his sheep, drives them into the field, with his dog, very early in the morning, and he stops at home to do his work, and then he makes his cheese; and, when you have begun to howl ‘Uhur, uhur,’ and the dog to bark, the shepherd will leave everything else, and will go off full speed. During this time I will steal the milk, and we will share it when you come to me.”

The wolf agreed to have a feast, and set out. He did just what the fox had told him. The dog began to bark when the wolf approached. And when the man heard that he went off, leaving everything, and our fox goes and steals the vessel in which the curdled milk was. What does he do then, before the arrival of the wolf? He gently, gently takes off the cream, thinly, thinly, and he eats all the contents of the jug. After he has eaten all, he fills it up with dirt, and puts back the cream on the top, and he awaits the wolf at the place where he had told him. The fox says to him, since it is he who is to make the division, that as the top is much better than the underneath part, the one who should choose that should have only that, and the other all the rest. “Choose now which you would like.”

The wolf says to him,

“I will not have the top; I prefer what is at the bottom.”

The fox then takes the top, and gives the poor wolf the vessel full of dirt.37 When he saw that, the wolf got angry; but the fox said to him,

“It is not my fault. Apparently the shepherd makes it like that.”

And the fox goes off well filled.

Another day he was again very hungry, and did not know what to contrive. Every day he saw a boy pass by on the road with his father’s dinner. He says to a blackbird,

“Blackbird, you don’t know what we ought to do? We ought to have a good dinner. A boy will pass by here directly. You will go in front of him, and when the boy goes to catch you, you will go on a little farther, limping, and when you shall have done that a little while the boy will get impatient, and he will put down his basket in order to catch you quicker. I will take the basket, and will go to such a spot, and we will share it, and will make a good dinner.”

The blackbird says to him, “Yes.”

When the boy passes, the blackbird goes in front of the boy, limping, limping. When the boy stoops (to catch him), the blackbird escapes a little further on. At last the boy, getting impatient, puts his basket on the ground, in order to go quicker after the blackbird. The fox, who kept watching to get hold of the basket, goes off with it, not to the place agreed upon, but to his hole, and there he stuffs himself, eating the blackbird’s share as well as his own.

Then he says to himself,

“I shall do no good stopping here. The wolf is my enemy, and the blackbird, too. Something will happen to me if I stay here. I must go off to the other side of the water.”

He goes and stands at the water’s edge. A boatman happened to pass, and he said to him:

“Ho! man, ho! Will you, then, cross me over this water? I will tell you three truths.”

The man said to him, “Yes.”

The fox jumps (into the boat), and he begins to say:

“People say that maize bread is as good as wheaten bread. That is a falsehood. Wheaten bread is better. That is one truth.”

When he was in the middle of the river, he said:

“People say, too, ‘What a fine night; it is just as clear as the day!’ That’s a lie. The day is always clearer. That is the second truth.”

And he told him the third as they were getting near the bank.

“Oh! man, man, you have a bad pair of trousers on, and they will get much worse, if you do not pass over people who pay you more than I.”

“That’s very true,” said the man; and the fox leapt ashore.

Then I was by the side of the river, and I learnt these three truths, and I have never forgotten them since.

The Ass and the Wolf

Astoa Eta Otsoa.

Like many others in the world, there was an ass. He was going along a ravine, laden with Malaga wine. (You know that asses are very much afraid of wolves, because the wolves are very fond of the flesh of asses.) While he was journeying along in that fashion, he sees a wolf coming at some distance; he could not hide himself anywhere. The wolf comes up, and the ass says to him:

“Good morning, good morning, Mr. Wolf; in case you should be thirsty, I have some excellent Malaga to drink.”

“I am not thirsty; no!—but astoundingly hungry; yes! My dinner to-day shall be your head and ears.”

“Mr. Wolf, if you were good enough to let me go and hear one mass–?”

He says to him, “Well! yes.”

Our ass goes off then. When he gets into the church he shuts the door inside with his foot, and stops quietly there.

When the wolf began to get impatient at waiting, he said:

“Ay, ay, what a long mass! one would say it was Palm Sunday.”

The ass said to him:

“Dirty old wolf, have patience. I am staying here with the angels, and I have my life (safe) for to-night.”

“Ay, ay, you bad ass, you are too, too, filthy, you know. If ever you meet with me again, mass you shall not hear.”

The ass said to him:

“There are no dogs round the fold of Alagaia; if you go there you would get lots of sheep.”

The wolf gives it up, and sets off for the flock where the ass had told him to go. When the ass saw that he had gone away he came out of the church, and went home, and took good care not to come near the wolf’s place any more.

IV.—Basa-Jaun, Basa-Andre, and Lamiñak

It is somewhat difficult to get a clear view of what Basa-Jaun and Basa-Andre, the wild man and the wild woman, really are in Basque mythology. In the first tale here given Basa-Jaun appears as a kind of vampire, and his wife, the Basa-Andre, as a sorceress, but we know of no other such representation of the former. Basa-Jaun is usually described by Basque writers as a kind of satyr, or faun, a wood-sprite; and Basques; in speaking of him to us, have frequently used the French term, “Homme de Bouc,” “He-goat-man,” to describe him. In some tales he appears rather as a species of brownie, and has received the familiar sobriquet of Ancho,38 from the Spanish Sancho. In this character he haunts the shepherds’ huts in the mountains, warms himself at their fires, tastes their clotted milk and cheese, converses with them, and is treated with a familiarity which, however, is never quite free from a hidden terror. His wife, the Basa-Andre, appears sometimes as a sorceress, sometimes as a kind of land-mermaid, as a beautiful lady sitting in a cave and “combing her locks with a comb of gold,” in remote mountain parts.39

The Lamiñak are true fairies, and do not differ more from the general run of Keltic fairies than the Scotch, Irish, Welsh, and Cornish fairies do from each other. In fact, the legends are often identical. The Lamiñak were described to us by one who evidently believed in, and dreaded them, as little people who lived underground. Another informant stated that they were little people who came down the chimney. They long to get possession of human beings, and change and carry off infants unbaptized, but they do not seem to injure them otherwise. They bring good luck to the houses which they frequent; they are fond of cleanliness, but always speak and give their orders in words exactly the opposite of their meaning. In common with Basa-Jaun and Basa-Andre they hate church bells,40 and though not actively hostile to Christianity, are driven away as it advances. They were formerly great builders of bridges, and even of churches,41 but were usually defrauded of their wage, which was to have been power over some human soul at the completion of the contract. Fairies’ wells and fountains are common in the Landes and neighbouring Gascon provinces, but we know of none in the Pays Basque.42 We failed distinctly to make out what are the “fairies’ holes (Lamiña-ziloak),” spoken of in the Heren-Suge tale (p. 36); as far as we could gather from the narrator they are simply bare places in hedges, when covered by the web of the gossamer spider. We know of no dances by moonlight on fairy rings of green herbage; but if the reader will carefully eliminate from his memory the rare fancies of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson about Puck, Oberon, and Titania, he will find little otherwise to differentiate between the Basque Lamiñak and the fairies of Sir Walter Scott, of Campbell, and of Croker’s “Irish Legends.” One peculiarity certainly is that all the Basque Lamiñak are sometimes said to be all called “Guïllen,”43 which appears to be the same as the French Guillaume, and our William.

It must be a sign of a failing belief and interest that witches and fairies are so often confounded. In these few stories it is evident that the witch is often a fairy, and the fairy a witch.

Basa-Jauna, the Wild Man

Once upon a time there lived in one house the landlady and the farmer’s wife.44 The farmer’s wife had three sons; one day they said to their mother to give each of them a ball and a penny roll, that they wished to go from country to country. The mother was sorry to part with her three much-loved sons; but all three started off.

When they were in the midst of a forest they saw that night was coming on, and the eldest brother said that he would climb up the first tree. He finds a tall tree, and climbs up to the top, to the very tip-top, and the second says to him:

“Do you see nothing?”

He says, “No, no; there’s nothing to be seen, nothing; not a feather! nothing!”

“Come down then; you are an old donkey.”

And the second climbs, and he sees nothing. The third says to him:

“You are no good at all, you others. I will climb up.”

And he climbs to the top, to the very tip-top. The others say to him:

“And do you not see anything?”

He says to them:

“Yes; I see a long column of smoke, but very, very thin, and far, very far away. Let us go towards that.”

And the three brothers set out together. At eight o’clock in the evening they come to a grand castle, and they knock at the door, and the Basa-Andre (wild woman) comes to answer. She asks:

“Who is there?”

And they reply, “It is we who are here.”

“What do you want, young children? Where are you going to at this time of night?”

“We ask and beg of you to give us shelter for to-night; we will be satisfied with a corner of the floor, poor wretches as we are.”

“I have my husband, the Basa-Jaun, and if he catches you he will eat you; that’s certain.”

“And if he catches us outside he will eat us all the same.”

Then she let these three brothers come in, and she hides the three in three different corners. Afterwards, at nine o’clock, the Basa-Jaun comes. He made a great noise and blustering, and then the Basa-Andre goes out, and says to him:

“There is nobody here.”

“Yes, you have somebody; bring them out, or else I will eat you myself.”

And she goes and brings out the eldest brother, trembling with fright. The Basa-Jaun says to him,

“Will you be my servant?”

He says to him, “Yes.”

And Basa-Jaun begins again to sniff about.

“You have still somebody else here?”

And she brings out the second, and he says to him:

“Will you be servant to me?”

And he said, “Yes.”

Again, he smelled the smell of some one, and at the third time she brings out the third, and he says to him:

“All three of you shall sup with me to-night, and afterwards we shall go to bed. But to-morrow we will all go hunting.”

And they go hunting the next day until eight o’clock in the evening.

Now, they had at home a little sister. She was little then, but in time she grew up. One day the landlady and the farmer’s wife had put out the new maize in the garden to dry; and when no one saw her, the little girl took some from her mistress’ heap, and put it to her own. When the mistress saw that, she began to cry out, saying to her,

“Bold hussey that you are, there is no one like you! You will come to a bad end like your brothers.”

And the young girl began to cry, and goes to find her mother, and says to her,

“Mother, had I any brothers?”45

She says to her, “Yes, my child.”

“What were they?”

“Child, they went away a long time ago,” she said to her.

This little girl says,

“I, too, must be off to-day. Give me a distaff to spin with, and a penny cake.”

She sets off, and comes to the house of the Basa-Jaun, and she knocks at the door, and she lets her in. While his wife was telling her that it is the house of the Basa-Jaun, the elder brother comes in; but they did not recognise one another at all. And afterwards Basa-Jaun comes, and says, as he enters the house: