Wentworth Webster

“ Fifine said to him, “Yes, I had forgotten you, but the ring made me think of you.”
Azor said to her, “I knew what was going to happen; that is why I gave you the ring.”
And coming into the house, she finds it as before, all full of rejoicings—the music was playing on all sides. Some days after that Azor said to her:
“You must marry me.”
Fifine gives no answer. He asks her again like that three times, and still she remained silent, silent. The whole house becomes sad again. She has no more her meals ready. Again Azor asks her if she will marry him. ”

“ He does as she told him, and starts off on his horse like the lightning, without paying the slightest attention to his brothers-in-law. He goes up to the city, and as soon as he has touched the gates with his sword they are in pieces. He enters the city, and all the world comes out and makes him a thousand fêtes. They declare that they wish for no more war. They give him the key of the treasury and all the papers, and he retires from there with all the honours. When he returns he tells his brothers-in-law to retire—that the war is finished. ”

“ This may be accounted for by saying that the sun’s great fiery eye is rather that of the setting than of the rising sun; that the red-hot stake is the ruddy mountain peak, or the tall fir-trunk, seen against the western horizon, and illumined by his descending rays. But in the stories of Theocritus and Ovid, where the sun-myth is not so apparent, the home of the Cyclops is still Sicily. Our first Tartaro legend reads very like a rough outline of Ovid’s story of “Acis and Galatea.” ”

“ The son of the widow is rejoiced that he has found a good comrade, and they vow great friendship under the oak. The son of the widow engages himself to bring the king’s son to Rome alive or dead, and the other binds himself to serve and aid him as long as he has a drop of blood in his veins. ”

“ His mother, an old witch, lived in one corner of the garden, in a hut constructed of turf.
One day a powerful young man was caught in the snares of the Tartaro, who carried him off to his house. This young man saw the Tartaro eat a whole sheep, and he knew that he was accustomed to take a snooze, and that after that his own turn would come. In his despair he said to himself that he must do something. Directly the Tartaro began to snore he put the spit into the fire, made it red-hot, and plunged it into the giant’s one eye. ”

“ When they had finished the division the fox said to him that there was still something—that he had told him it was to be the half of all he might possess. He remembers then his child, and takes out his sword to cut it in half, when the fox with his paw knocks the sword out of his hand, saying that it is enough; that he sees what a sterling good man he is, and that he wants nothing; that he (the fox) is the soul which he had saved by paying his debts, and that he is now in Heaven, thanks to him, and that he will keep his place and that of all his family ready there ”

“ From all sides arrive the young men. Our Petit Yorge goes off to the Tartaro, and tells him what has happened, and that he has again need of him. The Tartaro gives him a handsome horse, a superb dress, and a splendid sword. Equipped thus, Petit Yorge goes with the others. He gets ready. The young lady recognizes him immediately, and says so to her father. He has the good luck to carry off the ring on his sword; but he does not stop at all, but goes off galloping as hard as his horse can go. The king and his daughter were in a balcony, looking on at all these gentlemen. ”

“ He says to the princess:
“They have killed the wolf; I do not know if anything is going to happen to me. I am much afraid of it.”
“You have nothing to be afraid of. To whom could I have told anything? Nobody can get in here.”
When he has gone, the ant goes to the forest. He opens the wolf, and out of him comes a fox, who escapes at full speed. Malbrouk says, “Jesus, dog!” and he becomes a dog. He, too, sets off running, and catches the fox. They begin to fight, and he kills him, too. He opens him, and there comes out of him a pigeon. Malbrouk says, at once, “Jesus, hawk!” ”

“ In the first place I will remark that, supposing this proved, the Basques, or, if you will, the Iberians, would not be the less isolated; for how could the Iberian, any more than the Basque, be allied to the Keltic or to the Carthaginian? But this Iberian theory is not yet at all proved, and it will be easy to show it to be so in a few words. It reposes first of all on the following à priori—the Iberians have occupied all Spain and the south of Gaul, but the Escuara lives still at the foot of the Pyrénées; therefore the Escuara is a remnant of the language of the Iberians. ”

“ But, while fully admitting this, there is yet much that is pleasing in Basque poetry. If it has no great merits, it is still free from any very gross defects. It is always true and manly, and completely free from affectation. It is seldom forced, and the singer sings just because it pleases him to do so, not to satisfy a craving vanity or to strain after the name and fame of a poet. The moral tone is almost always good. ”

“ She goes and takes this old witch and has her burnt. She goes to look for Fidel in a little house which was at the bottom of the garden, and she sees his head bare.41 It was shining like the sun, and she entirely lost her own head for it, and she said to him, that he must marry her. As she left him no peace, her father said to her:
“If you will marry him, do so; but I will not give you anything. You must go and live in a corner of the mountain with your husband; there is a house there, and there you must stop. You may come only one day a week to see me.” ”

“ At last the old woman rises to go to her cupboard, and our man takes her little tinder-box. The old woman runs after him, wishing to catch him, but our man is ahead. She overtakes him just as he is leaping into the ship. The old woman takes hold of the skin of his neck, and tears it all right down to the soles of his feet. Our runner falls down, and they do not know whether he is alive or dead ”

“ Our translations are literal to baldness; the only liberty we have taken is in softening down the exceeding directness and grossness of some portions. Not one tale is in the least licentious—but the Basque language calls a spade a spade, and not an implement of husbandry.4 The Carlist war of the last four years has prevented our getting any legends from the Spanish Basque provinces, and has even to some extent hindered our work in the French Pays Basque, by providing an almost exclusive object of interest. ”

“ He goes, then, to the mountain, and sees the house, and goes to it. He finds his two brothers at the door cutting wood. He tells them that he is their brother; but they will not believe him. They take him indoors, and he tells his father and mother that he is Malbrouk. They are astonished to see such a big man for seven years’ old. They pass these three days in great delight; and he said to his brothers:
“There is plenty of room at my godfather’s for you too, and you must come with me.”
They go off, then, all three together. When they arrive, the witch was not at all contented. ”

“ The Tartaro tells him, too, that he will soon have need of him, and that he will only have to call him, and he will be his servant for ever.
He puts the key back; and everyone came to the dinner. When they had eaten well, the king said to them that they must go and see this curious thing. He takes them all with him. When they are come to the stable, he finds it empty. Judge of the anger of this king, and of his shame. ”

“ In a rage the father sends her into the forest, with two servants, to be killed. They spare her, and carry the horse’s heart to the king, and the girl lives in the forest “on the plants which the birds brought her, and on the flowers which the bees brought her.” The king’s son finds her there while hunting, takes her home, and marries her. At the wedding feast she gives her father bread without salt, and then discovers herself, and all is made right, and they live all happily, except the two sisters, who remain old maids. ”

“ They take the blackbird and throw him and the lady into the water, and leave the horse outside. The fox comes to them on the brink of the cistern, and says to them:
“I will leap in there; you will take hold of my tail one by one, and I will save you.”
The two wicked brothers had taken the blackbird, but he escaped from them as they entered the house, and went on to the white horse. Judge of the joy of the youngest brother when he sees that nothing is wanting to them! They go to the king. As soon as they enter the young lady begins to carol and to sing, the bird too, and the horse to neigh. ”

“ Everything presages the speedy extinction of the Escuara or Euscara, which is the name given to the Basque by those who speak it. The word, apparently, means merely “manner of speaking.” All people have, in a greater or less degree, the pretension which caused the Greeks to treat all foreigners as barbarians—that is, as not properly-speaking men.
Prince L. L. Bonaparte reckons the actual number of the Basques, not including emigrants established in Mexico, at Monte Video, and at Buenos Ayres, at 800,000, of whom 660,000 are in Spain, and 140,000 in France. ”

“ In La Soule the “Pastorales,” or Basque dramas, which last from six to eight hours of uninterrupted action, are learnt in the same way by word of mouth during the long evenings of winter.
These legends are still most thoroughly believed in. They still form part of the faith of these simple people—not at all, we need hardly say, in the use of mythological or atmospheric allegory, but as narratives of veritable fact. They believe them as they do the histories of the Bible or the “Lives of the Saints.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ For it is one of the charms of the Basque land 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. ”

“ Fifine says to him, “But they will see you as you get down.”
“No matter; shut them all the same.”
She goes to her father. Her father comes with all his court to fetch the serpent. He opens the door, and who is astonished? Why, everybody. Instead of a serpent there is a charming young man; and they all go to the church. When they come out there is a grand dinner at the king’s, but the bridegroom says to his wife:
“To-day we must not make a feast at all. We have a great business to do in the house; we will come another day for the feast.” ”

“ We may mark here, too, by numerous 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] 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 comparative mythology. ”

“ The story opens with man in misery, without the aid of cultivation and agriculture. The old king we take to be a personification of winter; his daughter of spring, warmth, and fertility—of what the French call “la belle saison.” The comb, with which she does her marvels, is the power which draws out her golden hair, the sun’s bright rays. The young man, who, without her aid, can effect nothing, is man in relation to the frozen ground, which needs her aid to quicken it into fertility. It is the old Sun-god, the Cyclops, who tells him where to find, and how to woo, his [131] fairy bride. ”

“ Our monster comes, crying, that it is all up with him, that they have taken the egg out of the pigeon, and that he does not know what must become of him. He tells her to strike him on the head with the hammer. ”

“ When she gets to Pretty-Rose’s house she hides herself, and tells her all that has happened. Pretty-Rose gives her some good liqueur to drink, and she comes to herself. The king makes a proclamation that whoever shall (merely) spit where the little dog shall have placed her feet shall be killed, and to mind and pay attention to it.
When the marriage day had arrived, came the queen. She brought for the wedding-day a robe of diamonds; for the next day, of gold; and for the third day, of silver. Judge how beautiful she was with her glint of diamonds, and her dress of diamonds, too. ”

“ They tell him how that a serpent with seven heads lived in the mountain, and that every day they drew lots to know who should go to him, because he must eat one person every day; and that to-day the lot has fallen on the king’s daughter, and that everyone was in mourning, and that the next day this princess must go very early to the mountain.
Our young man takes his horse, his dog, and his sword, and starts off before the princess. He keeps himself hidden until the princess was alone at the top. ”

“ The Basque is never mawkish or equivocal—with him right is right, and wrong is wrong, and Basque poetry leaves no unpleasant after-taste behind.8 [249]
The only peculiarity, in a poetical sense, is the extreme fondness for, and frequent employment of, allegory. In the love songs the fair one is constantly addressed under some allegorical disguise. It is a star the lover admires, or it is the nightingale who bewails his sad lot. The loved one is a flower, or a heifer, a dove or a quail, a pomegranate or an apple, figures common to the poets of other countries ”