THERE are few peoples more deserving of study than the Basques, and few countries more pleasant to visit and to live in than the Basque Provinces. After the treeless, unsheltered mountains and plains, and the compact villages of Castille or Navarre, the villages of the Basque country, set in green, and, to quote the phrase of a Spanish novelist, “all in the peace of prayer,” are a delightful contrast. The sky has no longer the harsh intensity of the Castilian, and everywhere is a softness of outlines; everywhere, too, is green—the green of chestnut and oak, of maize and trefoil, meadow and cider-orchard. The maize is the principal crop of the year, providing the heavy, yellow bread, artoa, as well as food for the oxen and material for mats, mattresses, and even cigarette-papers. The fields are divided by slabs of stone, and in the mists of the early mornings the Angelus rings from hidden towers; and the only other sound is that of scythes cutting the drenched grass or trefoil. Every true Basque is of noble, ancient family, and the Basque farmhouse, with its wooden faÇade and carved projecting buttresses, its wide balcony and deep ornamented eaves, is handed down from father to son without change. It stands surrounded by orchards and fields of maize, and often overshadowed by an immense fig-tree or a group of splendid walnut-trees. The roof slopes down on one side till it nearly reaches the ground. The lower part of the front is hollowed into a court, and on one side of this a door leads straight into the spacious kitchen, with its huge fireplace and many vessels of scoured bronze and copper, which forms the principal room of the house. A dark, narrow staircase leads to the bedrooms; through the cracks of the floors may often be seen the oxen in their stalls beneath. Large chests of oak, some of them beautifully carved, are to be found in most Basque farms. In Vizcaya a large vine-trellis, running forward on posts from the inner court beneath the balcony, further deepens the dark velvet spaces in the whitewashed front of the farm; in GuipÚzcoa many houses have no balcony or trellis, but are overgrown with heavy vines, that often entirely cover all the windows. From the windows hang long strings of red piments or white onions; above the door there is frequently an ancient stone coat-of-arms or an inscription with the name of the founders and the date, and above this a cross or the letters I. H. S. The house is thus half sacred. After the father’s death, the eldest son becomes “Lord of the house, etcheco-jauna,” while the younger sons often emigrate.

It was from their farms, so dear to them, that the Basques formerly took their names, so that they are called not Smith or Collier, but At-the-head-of-the-hill (Mendiburu) or Under-the-new-road (Bideberripe). Even now a Basque in the country is never called by his surname, but either by his Christian name or a nickname, or the name of his house or property. Etche (“house”) is perhaps the commonest compound. Etcheberri (“newhouse”) has numerous variants—Echeverri, Echevarri, Echavarri (in Vizcaya and Alava, where the Basque spoken is broader than in GuipÚzcoa, new is “barri”), Chavarri, Echarri, Echave, Xavier, Javer, etc. The number of Basque-speaking people can now but little exceed half a million, and only very rarely is a Basque found who is unable to speak Spanish or French.[63] Of the three Spanish-Basque provinces, GuipÚzcoa (capital San SebastiÁn) alone is entirely Basque. At Bilbao, the capital of Vizcaya, no Basque is spoken; and long before reaching Vitoria, the capital of Alava, the language spoken is Castilian. Nor is Basque spoken at Pamplona, the capital of Navarre, though it reaches almost to its walls, and till quite recently had a wider extension in Navarre, names of places such as Mendigorria (“red mountain”) surviving. The difficulty of the language has been somewhat exaggerated; there is a well-known story that the Devil spent three years in the Basque country, and only succeeded in learning two words: Bai, “yes;” and Es, “no.” But it remains true that the immense and complicated system of Basque conjugations is for a foreigner almost impossible to master; and at the same time the Basque literature to reward the learner is of the scantiest. Interesting indeed are the proverbs, some of the songs, and the pastorales, which have been compared in more than one particular with the Greek drama, but which are now acted only in the province of Soule. The stage, in the open air, is formed of plain planks, supported most often on barrels. A curtain cuts off a part for the actors to change their costumes, the same person often taking several parts in a play. The curtain has two doors, one for the good and one for the wicked. The good and the wicked are kept strictly separate. The pastorale is always in honour of Christianity and the Roman Catholic religion, and the wicked are the heathen, the Turks, the English, etc. Red is the colour of the wicked, that of the good is blue; in this respect no change is ever made. The good always walk slowly and solemnly, but when the wicked come on the stage the music is immediately changed to a lively air, and they never remain long quiet, their movements continuing quick and agitated. The acting is very simple; a journey, for instance, is represented by walking up and down the stage several times. The characters are usually taken exclusively by men and boys, but there are a few pastorales acted by women only; the sexes are never mingled. Strange and amusing anachronisms abound. In the pastorale entitled Abraham, Abraham appears in high boots and felt hat; Sarah in a modern, bright-coloured dress, with hat, veil, and fan; Isaac carries one or two sticks on his shoulder for the sacrifice; the Angel is a little boy in white. Then there are the heathen and the Christian kings, the former dressed in red, with high crowns arrayed with plumes and ribbons, the latter in blue with crowns of gold. In the middle of the play one of the Christian kings leaves the stage, and presently appears above the curtain and speaks with Abraham. He represents the “Eternal Father.” The verses are spoken in a loud monotonous chant, each verse being literally measured out by motion up and down the stage, the only change being when the music becomes faster or slower. The music is composed of the two Basque instruments the churula, a shrill pipe, and the tamboril, a kind of guitar with six strings, played by the same person. The strangeness of the scene, the loud chanting of the actors as the tone rises and falls, the fantastic costumes, the dances of the “Satans,” the prayers of the Christians, and especially the slow march and action of the blues, dignified and majestic, and the turbulent, restless movements of the reds, are not soon forgotten.

The Basque language, Eskuara, was described by the Spanish historian, Mariana, as “coarse and barbarous,” and a traveller among the Basques in the Middle Ages recorded that to hear them speak one would say they were dogs barking. In English, the word “jingo” has been said to derive from the Basque Jincoa, “God,” introduced by Wellington’s troops after the Peninsular War. The Basque word is an abbreviation of Jaungoicoa, “the Lord on high,” jauna, “lord,” being the common form of greeting between peasant and peasant. It becomes more and more rare to hear pure Basque spoken; foreign words creep in and, with the definite article “a” suffixed, hide under a Basque form: dembora (Lat. tempus) thus ousting the Basque word eguraldia for “weather,” gorphuntza (Lat. corpus) being “body,” and so on.[64] Pure Basque recedes to remote villages in the mountains, and there the Basque maintains his ancient customs, as averse from change to-day as when Horace described him as “Cantabrum indoctum juga ferre nostra.”[65]

II.—Basque Customs

An old Latin account speaks of the Basques as going nowhere—not even to church—without arms, usually a bow and arrows, and says that they are “gens affabilis, elegans et hilaris—courteous, graceful, and light-hearted;”[66] but, in spite of their known hospitality, their distrust of the foreigner and their hatred of intrusion are shown in more than one of their proverbs, as “The stranger-guest does not work himself, and prevents you from working.” The Basques are, indeed, the most energetic, as they are the most ancient people of the Peninsula. “Naguia bethi lansu—The idle man is ever busy,” says another of their proverbs; and, again, “Idle youth brings needy old age.”[67] Their fields are well and economically cultivated, and if their methods are antiquated, this is partly due to the mountainous nature of the country and the smallness of the holdings, making it simpler, e.g., to thresh corn by beating it sheaf by sheaf against a stone. Numerous small factories—of cloth as at Vergara, of paper at Tolosa, of iron and steel at Eibar and Elgoibar, of furniture at Azpeitia—and many quarries and tile-factories prove their industry; and entering a small Basque town such as Elgoibar, one may hear in tiny shops on all sides the sound of sandal-makers and workers in wood and leather. They know how to work, and they know how to enjoy themselves with thoroughness at the village fÊtes. From dawn to dusk the ball is to be heard against the wall of the pelota court on Sundays, with intervals of dancing to the shrill pipe and drum of the chunchunero. Voltaire, thinking of their love of dancing, described them as “un petit peuple qui danse sur les PyrÉnÉes,” and certain dances still survive. The sword-dance, ezpata danza, is one of the most remarkable, and has been described by Pierre Loti in “Figures et choses qui passaient;” and other dances are those representing the primitive methods of agriculture, the vintage, weaving, etc. The Basque pelota has, unfortunately, become, of recent years, a game of professionals, and as played, e.g., at Madrid, the interest is rather in the betting than in the play. The enthusiasm formerly excited among the Basques by the game is illustrated by the story that several Basque soldiers left the Army of the Rhine, returned to their country to play a game of ball, and, having played and won it, rejoined the army in time to take part in the battle of Austerlitz.[68] A game played in the immense court of a small Basque village is still a splendid sight, though it has lost much of its splendour, and the old Rebot is fast dying out. Pierre Loti has described a game of Blaid, as seen in a French-Basque village, in his novel of the Basque country, “Ramuntcho”; and this form of the game has been played in Paris and London. But old peasants will shake their heads and say it is no longer “as of old.” The expression “of old” is common on the lips of both French and Spanish Basques;[69] they willingly praise the past, and are intensely conservative of all their customs, their immemorial language, their games, privileges, religion. The ox-carts, with wheels of solid wood, to be seen under the vine-trellises of Basque farms, seem as old as the withered trunk of the oak of Guernica, and similarly many ancient customs have been retained. In some parts, at funerals, the men wear long cloaks reaching to the feet, the women also wearing long, full cloaks with hoods, that completely hide the face. The men go first, and then all the women—men and women in single file—the chief mourners coming last. Both at weddings and funerals, feasts were formerly given on such an extensive scale that the family was often nearly ruined, and a law (fuero) was passed forbidding to invite any but relations to the third degree. But the wedding-feast is still sufficiently imposing; it continues for many hours, and immediately afterwards the young begin dancing, while the old play cards. As to the offerings at funerals, “none but an eye-witness,” says Larramendi, in the eighteenth century, “could believe the quantity of bread and wax that is offered. Moreover, at these big funerals, in some places a live ox, and in others a sheep, is brought as an offering to the church door, and when the service is over it is taken away, and a fixed sum of money is given to the priest.”[70] This curious custom, a survival of the offerings to the dead and a trace of ancestor-worship, has not yet wholly died out. In one village at least (Arriba, on the borders of Navarre and GuipÚzcoa) it is customary at funerals to offer bread and wax, and to bring to the church either a quarter of veal or a live sheep, which is afterwards given to the priest. The Basques are intensely religious, and it is characteristic of them that before they were converted to Christianity they were the terror of the Christians—indeed, the pilgrims to Santiago de Compostella at all times feared the passage through the Basque Provinces, the strange language adding to their difficulties (“La Biscaye,” they said, “oÙ il y a d’Étrange monde, oÙ l’on n’entend pas les gens”). The Basques troop in to early Mass every Sunday, often by rough mountain paths, from farms lying a league away. Yet it must not be thought that the Basques are priest-ridden; the priests are respected, and often take part in their games or walk many miles across the hills to visit the sick. But though the Basques are often narrow and fanatical, they have far too much dignity and independence to be the blind followers of the priests. In the Carlist wars they fought chiefly for their old privileges, or fueros, and the result of the wars was that nearly all their fueros were lost, in 1839 and 1876. “Nothing is so fair as liberty,” says one of their songs, and their national song, “Guernikako Arbola,”[71] with its stirring air, celebrates “the holy tree of Guernica, loved by all the Basques.” In the little green-set town of Guernica a fine new oak, some forty years old, has taken the place of the old tree, now a mere trunk protected by glass, while in the little pillared temple are still to be seen the seven marble seats on which assembled—

These are the two last lines of Wordsworth’s sonnet to the

Noble, handsome, graceful in all their movements, hardy and shrewd, the Basques are active and untiring whether as farmers, smugglers, soldiers, or pelotaris. They live aloof in scattered farms, a healthy open-air life (their word for rich is aberatz, from abere, head of cattle), and, indeed, in a town they tend to lose some of their good qualities. Their dress has always an air of careful neatness and distinction, with the bÉret, white shirt (without a tie), dark blue or black coat thrown over shoulder (or long blouse), silent sandals and the peculiar makhila, a stout iron-pointed stick of medlar. They are shrinking into their mountains, a race doomed to perish, “un peuple qui s’en va.” They have watched during thousands of years new races spring up and prosper around them, and in the twentieth century they see trains and motors penetrate to the inaccessible places where the Roman legions were checked, or Charlemagne with all his peerage fell. An inscription here and there shows them bowing to destiny and the relentless march of time in saddened resignation, or betaking themselves to the consolation of their religion—the following inscriptions, for instance, along the frontier: “Man is beaten by every hour, and the last leads him to the grave.”[72] “Vulnerant omnes, ultima necat.”[73] “Ici fait l’home cequi pevt et fortune ce que elle vevt.”[74] “Post fata resurgo.”[75] “Deum time, Mariam invoca.”[76] “Orhoit hilcea.”[77] The privileges that remain to the Basques are few, consisting in a slightly less acute centralization than obtains in other provinces of Spain.[78] They have no fueros left to make it worth their while to take up arms afresh, and they still have vivid memories of their wasted fields and desolate farms in the last Carlist war. But were their ancient religion to be really attacked, or were an attempt made to expel the monks from the Basque provinces, the peasants could be counted upon to make a desperate resistance, more in defence of their independence than on behalf of the monks themselves. Foreigners have often misunderstood the Basques,[79] for they are reserved and silent towards the new-comer (“Gizonciki arabotz andi,” they say—“Little man, much noise”; “the empty barrel makes the most noise,” and so on). But there is no suspicion of commercialism about their love of liberty such as has often been attributed to the Catalans: they love their beautiful land, the Eskual-erria, for its own sake and the religion and customs of their forefathers, and the strangers who visit their country soon learn to love and admire its broad healing power and spirit of ancient peace. It is a country of civilization without great cities, where exists an intimate and ennobling relation between the soil and the inhabitants.