Basque Legends
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- uSSEarn VJBRARy OF THE UNI Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 http://archive.org/details/basquelegendsOOwebsrich vv>> 4? J » • \J \ ifiM? ^ OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ACHERIA, THE FOX.-P. 43. SECOND EDITION. Basque Legends: COLLECTED, CHIEFLY IN THE LABOURD, REV. WENTWORTH WEBSTER, M.A., OXON. WITH AN ESSAY £f)e Basque Hanpafle, M. JULIEN VINSON, OK THE REVUE DE LINGUISTIQUE, PARIS. TOGETHER WITH 7IPPENDI£: B^gQUE P0EW. ^ OF THE UNIVERSITY GRIFFITH AND FARMN, OF Successors to Newbery and Harris, ^^^^ L fFOR^VS* CORNER OF ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD; AND WALBROOK & Co., 52, FLEET STREET, E. C. 1879. MIX /< (lu« ** PRINTED BY W. O. WALBROOK, AT THE FLEET STREET PRINTING WORKS, 52, FLEET STREET, LONDON. TO M. ANTOINE D'ABBADIE, OF ABBADIA, MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE, THIS TRANSLATION OF LEGENDS, ORIGINALLY TOLD IN THE LANGUAGE OF HIS ANCESTORS, IN GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF KINDLY COURTESY AND OF EVER-READY ASSISTANCE, IS BY HIS OBLIGED AND OBEDIENT SERVANT, WENTWORTH WEBSTER. 161397 ————— CONTENTS. PAGE Introduction vii I. Legends of the Tartaro i The Tartaro 4 * M. d'Abbadie's Version 4 « Variations of above ... ... ... 5 Errua, the Madman 6 < Variations of above ... io The Three Brothers, the Cruel Master, and the Tartaro ii The Tartaro and Petit Perroquet 16 II. The Heren-Suge.—The Seven-Headed Serpent ... 20 The Grateful Tartaro and the Heren-Suge 22 < Variation of above 32 The Seven-Headed Serpent ... 33 <. The Serpent in the Wood 38 III. Animal Tales 42 Acheria, the Fox 43 The Ass and the Wolf 45 IV. Basa-Jaun, Basa-Andre, and Laminar 47 Basa-Jauna 40v< The Servant at the Fairy's 53 The Fairy in the House 55 The Pretty but Idle Girl 56 The Devil's Age 58 The Fairy-Queen Godmother... £9 V. Witchcraft and Sorcery 64 The Witches at the Sabbat 66 The Witches and the Idiots 67 The Witch and the New-Born Infant 69 The Changeling 13 —— vi Contents. VI. Contes des Fees... (A) Tales like the Keltic Malbrouk The Fisherman and his Sons Tabakiera, the Snuff-Box Mahistruba, the Master Mariner Dragon ... ... ... ... ... ... ' ... Ezkabi-Fidel Variation of above ... The Lady-Pigeon and her Comb Suggested Explanation of above ... Laur-Cantons ... The Young School-Boy The Son who Heard Voices ... The Mother and her Idiot Son ; or, the Clever Thief ... Juan Dekos, the Blockhead (Tontua) Variation of the above—Juan de Kalais The Duped Priest (B) Contes des Fees, derived directly from the French Ass'-Skin Variations of above The Step-Mother and Step-Daughter Beauty and the Beast Variation of above , The Cobbler and his Three Daughters (Blue-Beard) Variations of above... ... The Singing Tree, the Bird which tells the Truth, and the Water which makes Young Variation of above ... ... ... ... The White Blackbird The Sister and her Seven Brothers Variations, etc. ... ... List of Publication of Foreign Legends in France VII. Religious Tales Fourteen Variation of above—Jesus Christ and the Old Soldier . The Poor Soldier and the Rich Man The Widow and her Son The Story of the Hair-Cloth Shirt (La Cilice) The Saintly Orphan Girl The Slandered and Despised Girl An Essay on the Basque Language Appendix—Basque Poetry INTRODUCTION. The study of the recent science of Comparative Mytho- logy is one of the most popular and attractive of minor scientific pursuits. It deals with a subject-matter which has interested most of us at one period of our lives, and turns the delight of our childhood into a charm and re- creation for maturer age. Nor is it without more useful lessons. In it we see more clearly than perhaps elsewhere the reciprocal influence, which none can wholly escape, of words and language upon thought, and again of thought and fancy upon words and language ; how mere words and syllables may modify both conception and belief ; how the metaphor, which at first presented an object more clearly and vividly to the mind than any more direct form of speech could do, soon confuses and at last wholly distorts the original idea, and buries its meaning under a new and foreign superstructure. We may mark here, too, by nume- rous examples, how slowly the human mind rises to the conception of any abstract truth, and how continually it falls back upon the concrete fact which it is compelled to picture to itself in order to state in words the simplest viii Introduction, mental abstraction. The phrase, " The dawn flies before the sun," passing into the myth of Daphne and Apollo, is a lesson in psychology no less than in philology and in com- parative mythology. Now, both the interest and the value of these studies are enhanced in proportion as they become complete. Our conclusions approach nearer to certainty, and will gradually pass from theory to demonstration, as we find the same legends and modes of thought and expression on natural phenomena constantly reappearing among the most distant and the most isolated peoples, in languages which in their complex forms tell of the infancy of human speech, and also in those whose worn-down frame speaks of the world's old age. Of the peoples now settled in Western Europe, the Basques are those which are the most separate from other populations ; distinct in language, they represent, in a more or less mixed state, some older stratum of European ethno- logy. Their language, too, as regards the mass of the people, is still practically unwritten.* Here there is a chance of finding legends in a purer and older form than among any other European people ; and in what they have borrowed from others, we may have an almost unique crucial test of the time which it takes for such traditions to pass orally from people of one language to another and totally different one. None of these legends have been published or even noticed till within the last two years, when M. d'Abbadie read the legend of the Tartaro before the Societe * See on this head M. Vinson's Essay in Appendix. Introduction. ix des Sciences et des Arts de Bayonne, and M. Cerquand his " Legendes et Recits Populaires du Pays Basque," before the sister society at Pau.* Of course we must expect to find such legends very much altered, and in a state of almost inextricable confusion, and this not only through forgetfulness, and through the lapse of time since their origin, not only by the influence of a total change of religion, but they are also mingled and inter- penetrated with totally new ideas ; the old and the new will *be found side by side in striking and sometimes grotesque contrast. As in Campbell's " Tales of the West Highlands," personages of mythical antiquity go to kirk, and indulge in other decidedly; post-Reformation practices, so in these Basque tales the reader must not be startled by the intro- duction of maize and tobacco, of cannon and gunpowder, of dances at the mairie, and the use of the guillotine, in stories which, perhaps, originally told of the movements of the stars, of the wars of the forces of the atmosphere, of the bright beauty of the rising, or of the glowing glory of the setting sun.t The body is the same in all ages, but the dress varies with the changing fashions. To borrow an illustration from a slightly older science, this is not a simple case of contorted and overlying strata to be restored to their original order, but rather of strata worn down, * The second part of M. Cerquand's " Legendes et Recits Populaires du Pays Basque" (Pau, 1876), appeared while the present work was passing through the press. It is chiefly occupied with legends of Basa-Jaun and Lamiiiak. f Not that we suppose all these tales to be atmospheric myths ; we adopt this only as the provisional hypothesis which appears at present to cover the largest amount of facts. It seems certainly to be a " vera " causa" in some cases ; but still it is only one of several possible verae causae," and is not to be applied to all. ; x Introduction. reconstructed, and deposited anew, and even modified in their latest stage by the interference of human action. And thus our problem becomes an exceedingly complex and difficult one, and our readers must not be disappointed if our conclusions are not so clear and positive as might be wished. The present is merely a tentative, and not, in any sense, a final essay towards its solution. How are these legends told now, and how have they beer preserved ? They are told by the Basque peasants, either when neighbours meet—after the fashion made familiar to us by American novelists in the " Husking Bee"—for the purpose of stripping the husks from the ears of maize, an operation generally performed in one or two long ses- sions ; or at the prolonged wedding and other feasts, oi which we have evidence in the tales themselves, or else ir the long nights round the wintry hearth of their lonel) dwellings. For it is one of the charms of the Basque lane that the houses are scattered all over the face of the country, instead of being collected into crowded villages and it is, perhaps, to this fact chiefly that we owe the preservation of so much old-world lore, and of primitive ideas, among this people. The reader must not be sur- prised at the length of some of our specimens. The detaih of the incidents of the longest are religiously preserved and, as told at home, they are probably more lengthy (a? anyone will understand who has ever taken anything dowr from recitation) than as here given.