Customer Reviews

A View from the Witch's Cave: Folktales of the Pyrenees (Basque)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an important book to understand some of the magical and animist conceptions that appear in the popular lives of the Basques. I would recommend this book to everyone, but specially to those that are interested in the history of European Witchcraft in general and Basque Witchcraft in particular. Barandiaran, the father of Basque anthropology, presents some of the aspects less known about Basque culture and tradition. Basque mythology provides an explanation for the witch-craze of the 16th and 17th centuries in Spain. This book presents the core of Basque culture that is its myths and folktales. It is a magical reading experience.

"A View from the Witch's Cave" is a great anthology of sixty-four folktales from the Spanish Basque Country. Collected between 1900 and 1956 by José Miguel de Barandiarán, the Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm of the Basque Country, they were published in Spanish translation in 1988. The stories are arranged into three sections: witty animal fables, tales about humans and witches, and "legends" that explain the origins of Basque folk-beliefs. As Barandiarán points out in his introduction, while these tales only form part of the "peripheral vision" of today's Basques, they encapsulate a lot of the ancient Basque folklife. Elements of the "old wisdom" have co-existed with Christianity for hundreds of years and allow us both to glimpse some of the Basque Country's unrecorded history and "piece together the spiritual physiognomy" of the ancient and early-modern Basques.

The book's English title and the previous customer review, though, are misleading. First, this is not entirely a book about witchcraft. Witches figure prominently in many of the stories, but the original Spanish title -- "Brief Anthology of Fables, Stories, and Legends from the Basque Country" -- was more accurate. Second, the subtitle, "Folktales of the Pyrenees", is also misleading. These tales come only from the Basque Country, not from Catalonia.

Still, it's a great anthology. The English translation by Linda White is expert. If you're interested in finding the tales in Spanish, check out the original version of the book (Editorial Txertoa, San Sebastián, 1988) or the excellent 12-volume series, "Cuentos y leyendas de la Euskal Herria fantástica" edited by José Dueso (ROGER, Donostia, 1998) in which many of the stories are reprinted almost verbatim.