Basque Tales 7

Basque tales

Here are various tales Basque : The horseshoe and the cherries, the spinners of Eremedio, The mule driver of Bargota

Basque tales

The horseshoe and the cherries

Once, while they were going through the Country Basque, the Lord Jesus, showing him something on the ground, said to Saint Peter: Pick up this horseshoe from the ground. But Saint-Pierre, by stealth, with a kick, chases away the horseshoe, saying to himself:
– » Why collect this nasty scrap metal?

The Lord Jesus, then, also by stealth, raised the iron himself, and, arriving in the village, he sold it for two cents to a blacksmith. Then, with these two pennies, he bought some cherries. And they set off again. It was excruciatingly hot. Saint-Pierre, with a parched mouth, looked in all directions and said to himself:
– “Aren’t we going to see, this way, only a small spring?

At that same moment, and as if nothing had happened, the Lord Jesus dropped a cherry from his pocket. Saint Peter immediately grabbed it and greedily put it in his mouth, fearing to be seen by the Lord Jesus. A little further on, once, twice, ten times, twenty times, it was the same thing again: the Lord Jesus threw the cherries, and Saint Peter ate them until the last one.

They then stopped for a moment under the cover of a tree, and the Lord Jesus said to Saint Peter:
– » If, only once, you had bent down to raise the horseshoe, you would not have had to bend down twenty times to eat the cherries!


The Eremedio spinners

In the Eremedio house, every night, spinners gathered. Someone says:
“No one can go around a house three times at night.”

One of the spinners said she could do it without fear, her name was Catalin.
She went out to do it. She made two turns. On the third she disappeared.

His comrades, worried, went to the entrance of the house:
“Catalin!” Catalin! »

She didn't answer.
Later, from the bridge apparently near the Erzillegi house, a voice was heard saying:
Katalin, bay Katalin!
Katalin Gaueko'ok eaman din
-(Catalin, yes Catalin,
-It was Gaueko who won)-

We had no further news from Catalin. Since then, the Erzillegi Bridge has been called Katalinzubi (Catherine's Bridge).


Bargota's mule

A mule driver passed near the church of Bargota (Navarra) with his herd. He met Juanis, the parish priest.

He then noticed that the sound of the last mule's cowbells reached him very weakly. He turned his head to look and realized with fear the spectacle offered by all his mules wandering through the air, all around the church tower. He started to scream.

Juanis approached him and said:
“don’t be afraid, I’ll take them down for you right away.”

Which he did. This is because he had a needle case with him in which he kept an army of small beings called mamur.

They were capable of miracles. For example, they could transport him to distant countries in an instant. They could also build a house in a single night, cause the appearance of mysterious bulls, companies of partridges and herds of horses.