Basque Legends; With an Essay on the Basque Language. Wentworth Webster
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fed but once in three months, or the whole country would have been desolate. With a strong inspiration of his breath, he drew into his capacious maw, across the valleys, whole flocks of sheep and goats, herds of oxen, men, women, children, the population of whole villages at once. He was now asleep, and inert, after such a repast. The whole male population of several valleys assembled to consult on what should be done. After long and fruitless debate an old man arose and spoke:—“We have nearly three months yet before he will wake; let us cut down all the forests on the opposite hills; then let us bring all our forges and all the iron we possess, and with the wood thus cut down let us melt it all into one red-hot fiery mass; then we will hide ourselves behind the rocks, and make all the noise we can to try and awaken the monster.” So said, so done. The serpent awoke in a rage at having his slumbers broken, he saw something bright on the opposite side of the valley, and drew in a long breath, and the fiery mass, with a roar like a thunderbolt, flew across the valley, right down the monster’s throat. Then, what convulsions ensued; rocks were uptorn or split open, the mountains were shattered, the glaciers beaten into dust as the serpent twisted and lashed about in his agony. To quench his agony of thirst he descended to the valley, and drank up all the streams from Gavarnie to Pierrefitte. Then, in his last convulsion, he threw himself back upon the mountain side and expired; his head rested in a deep hollow; as the fire within him slowly cooled, the water he had swallowed poured out of his mouth, and formed the present Lac d’Isabit. In M. Cerquand’s legend of the Dragon d’Alçay, the red-hot iron is replaced by “a cow’s skin full of gunpowder.” In all the Basque legends of this class the hero dies.
But these legends differ widely from the following tales; there is in them no princess to be rescued, no charcoal-burner, no marriage, or any other wonders. Were it not for their still closer resemblance to the Gaelic tales, we should suspect the following legends to be simply translations of some French legend of St. George. As we remarked before, like the Deccan cobras, the Heren-Suge is always seven-headed. It is strange, too, to notice that the princess always behaves in the same chivalrous way. “One is enough to die.” The union, too, of Tartaro and Heren-Suge in the same tale is curious.
The Grateful Tartaro and the Heren-Suge
Like many of us who are, have been, and shall be in the world, there was a king, and his wife, and three sons. The king went out hunting one day, and caught a Tartaro. He brings him home, and shuts him up in prison in a stable, and proclaims, by sound of trumpet, that all his court should meet the next day at his house, that he would give them a grand dinner, and afterwards would show them an animal such as they had never seen before.
The next day the two sons of the king were playing at ball against (the wall of) the stable where the Tartaro was confined, and the ball went into the stable. One of the boys goes and asks the Tartaro—
“Throw me back my ball, I beg you.”
He says to him, “Yes, if you will deliver me.”
He replies, “Yes, yes,” and he threw him the ball.
A moment after, the ball goes again to the Tartaro. He asks for it again; and the Tartaro says:
“If you will deliver me, I will give it you.”
The boy says, “Yes, yes,” takes his ball, and goes off.
The ball goes there for the third time, but the Tartaro will not give it before he is let out. The boy says that he has not the key. The Tartaro says to him:
“Go to your mother, and tell her to look in your right ear, because something hurts you there. Your mother will have the key in her left pocket, and take it out.”
The boy goes, and does as the Tartaro had told him. He takes the key from his mother, and delivers the Tartaro. When he was letting him go, he said to him:
“What shall I do with the key now? I am undone.”
The Tartaro says to him:
“Go again to your mother, and tell her that your left ear hurts you, and ask her to look, and you will slip the key into her pocket.”
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. He said:
“I should like to eat the heart, half cooked, and without salt, of him who has let my beast go.”
Some time afterwards the two brothers quarreled in presence of their mother, and one said to the other:
“I will tell our father about the affair of the Tartaro.”
When the mother heard that, she was afraid for her son, and said to him:
“Take as much money as you wish.”
And she gave him the Fleur-de-lis.21 “By this you will be known everywhere as the son of a king.”
Petit Yorge22 goes off, then, far, far, far away. He spends and squanders all his money, and does not know what to do more. He remembers the Tartaro, and calls him directly. He comes, and Petit Yorge tells him all his misfortunes; that he has not a penny left, and that he does not know what will become of him. The Tartaro says to him:
“When you have gone a short way from here you will come to a city. A king lives there. You will go to his house, and they will take you as gardener. You will pull up everything that there is in the garden, and the next day everything will come up more beautiful than before. Also, three beautiful flowers will spring up, and you will carry them to the three daughters of the king, and you will give the most beautiful to the youngest daughter.”23
He goes off, then, as he had told him, and he asks them if they want a gardener. They say, “Yes, indeed, very much.” He goes to the garden, and pulls up the fine cabbages, and the beautiful leeks as well. The youngest of the king’s daughters sees him, and she tells it to her father, and her father says to her:
“Let him alone, we will see what he will do afterwards.” And, indeed, the next day he sees cabbages and leeks such as he had never seen before. Petit Yorge takes a flower to each of the young ladies. The eldest said:
“I have a flower that the gardener has brought me, which has not its equal in the world.”
And the second says that she has one, too, and that no one has ever seen one so beautiful. And the youngest said that hers was still more beautiful than theirs, and the others confess it, too. The youngest of the young ladies found the gardener very much to her taste. Every day she used to bring him his dinner. After a certain time she said to him,
“You must marry me.”
The lad says to her,
“That is impossible. The king would not like such a marriage.”
The young girl says, too,
“Well, indeed, it is hardly worth while. In eight days I shall be eaten by the serpent.”
For eight days she brought him his dinner again. In the evening she tells him that it is for the last time that she brought it. The young man tells her, “No,” that she will bring it again; that somebody will help her.
The next day Petit Yorge goes off at eight o’clock to call the Tartaro. He tells him what has happened. The Tartaro gives him a fine horse, a handsome dress, and a sword, and tells him to go to such a spot, and to open the carriage door with his sword, and that he will cut off two of the serpent’s heads. Petit Yorge goes off to the said spot. He finds the young lady in the carriage. He bids her open the door. The young lady says that she cannot open it—that there are seven doors, and that he had better go away; that it is enough for one person to be eaten.
Petit Yorge opens the doors with his sword, and sat down by the young lady’s side. He tells her that he has hurt his ear, and asks her to look at
This Fleur-de-lis was supposed by our narrator to be some mark tattooed or impressed upon the breast of all kings’ sons.
This, of course, is “Little George,” and makes one suspect that the whole tale is borrowed from the French; though it is just possible that only the names, and some of the incidents, may be.
Cf. “Ezkabi Fidel,” 112, below.