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.