Basque tales
Here are various tales Basque : Herensuge and Gaston de Belzunce, the shepherdess of Bidarrai, the man and the snake
Herensuge and Gaston de Belzunce
In 1407, a monstrous snake, coming from the Pyrenees, caused destruction on the banks of the Nive. Everyone fled the area around Irubi (St Pierre d'Irube), where a cave served as a refuge for the hydra.
Gaston de Belsunce, a Navarrese barely nineteen years old, accompanied by a single squire, and having a spear as his only weapon, came to challenge the monster in his lair. When the enormous snake came out, the squire fled, only the intrepid Gaston remained.
He injured the monster before it embraced him and the two, tightly bound, rolled down the slope.
They fell into the Nive where they were found dead the next day.
The shepherdess of Bidarrai
A young shepherdess from Bidarrai was grazing her flock of sheep on Mount Iuskai. One day she disappeared. Her parents and neighbors searched for her in vain. They knew nothing about her.
At night, in the vicinity of Iuskai, a voice could be heard several times saying:
“Ago! ago! "
(Wait! wait!)
People were amazed.
One night we saw a jet of light crossing space, it was like a star heading towards the Zelharburu massif, it entered one of the caves.
The following day, the local people came to explore the cavity and there, at the bottom, they saw the petrified shepherdess. Today she is called Harpeko Saindua (the saint of the cave).
Man and snake
In Ormazarreta in the Aralar mountain a shepherd had gone to graze his sheep. He found the young of a snake which seemed to him to be a pretty animal and he took it away in a bag. He taught him to drink whey.
Thus, every day at the same time, the young snake came to drink the whey.
During the winter the shepherds go down to their houses. But the shepherd of Ormazarreta, when he came back in the spring, came with a whistle and the snake came back as before. Then the shepherd sold his sheep and no longer went up to Aralar.
However, once he went up to San Miguel de Aralar and passing through Ormazarreta he said to his friends:
“I can bring out a monster here.”
They started arguing and he took out the whistle and whistled, then a huge snake appeared. The shepherd approached thinking that she would do nothing to him, but when the snake saw that there was no whey, it surrounded him from head to toe and suffocated him.
