Basajaun

In Basque mythology, the basajaun (plural: basajaunak) were an ancient human race of stout, hairy wild men who were megalith builders. Basajaun means “Lord of the Woods”. They once dwelled in the mountains of the Basque Pyrenees of northern Spain and southern France. They had knowledge of magic. The Basajaun was heavily built and about 2 to 3 meters tall. Dark reddish hair reached their knees. They were very agile, strong, hairy beings with animal characteristics. The Basajaun watch over the forests and all wild creatures. They are rural genies, also called the Wild Lords. They are also considered to be the protector of flocks. When comes a storm a Basajaun will shout warnings to the shepherds; and they prevent wolves from approaching flocks. They are the first to have cultivated the earth. Human beings obtained the right to cultivate the earth when a man won a bet with a Basajaun. He stole the seeds that the Basajun was sowing and he came back to his peoples to teach them how to produce food.

Basajaun Myths

Long ago, only the basajauns (lords of the woods) knew how to plant, harvest and mill wheat to make flour. The basajauns kept this knowledge to themselves, but a Basque man worked out a plan to steal the secret and give it to the human race. The Basque man made a bet with the basajauns to see who could jump over the heaps of wheat they had harvested. The basajauns laughed at the Basque man, because they knew that a mere human would be no competition for them, and they laughed at his big floppy shoes. They all jumped over the wheat easily, but when the Basque man tried, he landed on top of one of the heaps, and the basajauns laughed again. Then the Basque man laughed, and he laughed last and best, but quietly, because his trick had worked. Now, the basajauns are big and slow-witted, but when they saw the Basque man walking away home, with his big, floppy shoes full of grains of their wheat, they realised that they had been tricked. When they stopped laughing, the Basque man began to run for his life, and it's a good thing that he did. He was already a far away when one of the basajauns threw a hatchet. The lords of the woods may be slow, but they are strong. The Basque man saw the hatchet coming, and he ducked behind a chestnut tree just in time, because the hatchet struck the tree and split it in half. Now the Basque man had the seeds, but he didn't know when was the right time of the year to sow them. Fortunately, a man was passing by the cave of one of the basajauns, and he heard him singing:

"If the humans knew this song
They'd be well informed.
When the leaf is in the bud
Then you sow the corn.
When the leaf falls off the trees
Then you sow the wheat.
When the February feast comes round
Sow the turnip in the ground."

The man told the Basque man what he heard, and the Basque man told all the humans, and that is how cultivation spread through the world.

The basajaun also exists in Aragonese mythology in the valleys of Tena, Ansó, and Broto under the names Basajarau, Bonjarau, or Bosnerau.

Depictions In Art

Fifteenth-century carvings depicting the basajaunak can be seen in Burgos Cathedral, and in the monastery of Santa María la Real in Najera.

Speculation

Give the arrival of the first Basques (circa 40,000 b.c.) and the overlap of the then-indigenous people, the Neanderthals (circa 200,000 to 40,000), some speculation has arisen as to whether the Basajuanak stories originated out of proto-Basque interaction with the soon-to-be extinct Neanderthals, particularly given the close similarity in Neanderthal/Basajuanak physical characteristics.

Such speculation does not fit the Neanderthals completely, since several reconstructed Neanderthal skeletons are several inches taller than 5 feet, which is taller than the average humans from that era. [http://www.livescience.com/history/050310_neanderthal_reconstruction.html Neanderthal Height] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9850627 Neanderthal Height]

ee also

*Woodwose
*Dwarf