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Primitive Basque man was converted to Christianity very late, which produced the creation of a vast collection of myths and legends which still exist today thanks to the great Basque oral tradition.Even most primitive Man felt the need to give meaning to the phenomena and natural cycles which conditioned his existence. He interpreted them, named them, found an explanation for them, and with these answers built up his own myths, legends, and religions.These formed the framework for his relation with nature and with anything else in his environment which was incomprehensible or supposedly magic.
Primitive
Basque man was converted to Christianity very late. He was also all but
cut off from other cultures by aninhospitable and very inaccessible
geography.
Thus he came to invent a vast collection of myths and
legends which still exist today thanks to the great Basque oral
tradition.
For him the mountains and
valleys developed an almost human significance, and in the bowels of
the earth ran rivers of milk, out of the reach of mortals. Two powers
ruled nature and their designs conditioned human life: the god of the
firmament, "Ost" or "Ortzi" - equivalent to the Roman god Jupiter, the
Greek Zeus or the Germanic Thor, and "Ilargia", the moon, a feminine
force which emerged from the world of hidden things.
"Ost" and "Eguzki", the
light of the sun, belonged to the day, to the earth, since it was from
the earth that the sun rose and to the earth that it returned every
day. "Ilargia" though, belonged to the world of thedeceased, of souls,
to the hidden side of existence and nature.
The Basques are very
closely in touch with the moon and its cycles, and this figure appears
in numerous myths, rites and legends. The female divinity of the
ancient Basques was "Mari", the lady or gentlewoman who lived in the
caves which reach deep down to the centre of the earth. Although she
could take on different forms, she showed herself as a breathtakingly
beautiful woman, and moved from one mountain to the next crossing the
sky like a fireball. Any area which holds itself in esteem will have a
model of the dwelling of Mari placed on its highest peak, for example
the mountains of Gorbea, Anboto, Aketegi or the Aralar range.
Copyright: EiTB24
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