Basque Legends; With an Essay on the Basque Language. Wentworth Webster
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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 years15 (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,16 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.
1 One of the oddest instances of mistaken metaphors that we know of occurs in “La Vie de St. Savin, par J. Abbadie, Curé de la Paroisse” (Tarbes, 1861). We translate from the Latin, which is given in a note:—“Intoxicated with divine love, he was keeping vigil according to his custom, and when he could not find a light elsewhere, he gave light to his eyes from the light that was in his breast. The small piece of wax-taper thus lit passed the whole night till morning without being extinguished.”—Off. S. Savin.
2 This Fleur-de-lis was supposed by our narrator to be some mark tattooed or impressed upon the breast of all kings’ sons.
3 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.
4 Cf. “Ezkabi Fidel,” 112, below.
5 In Campbell’s “Tale of the Sea-Maiden,” instead of looking in his ear, the king’s daughter put one of her earrings in his ear, the last two days, in order to wake him; and it is by these earrings and her ring that she recognises him afterwards, instead of by the pieces of dress and the serpent’s tongues.
6 Campbell, Vol. I., lxxxvii., 8, has some most valuable remarks on the Keltic Legends, showing the Kelts to be a horse-loving, and not a seafaring race—a race of hunters and herdsmen, not of sailors. The contrary is the case with these Basque tales. The reader will observe that the ships do nothing extraordinary, while the horses behave as no horse ever did. It is vice versâ in the Gaelic Tales, even when the legends are identical in many particulars.
7 The three days’ fight, and the dog, appear in Campbell’s “Tale of the Sea-Maiden,” Vol. I., pp. 77–79.
8 The Basque word usually means “Eau de Cologne.”
9 This is a much better game than the ordinary one of tilting at a ring with a lance, and is a much more severe test