Basque ethnography at a glance
Fat Thursday in Berriz (Bizkaia), 2015. Igone Etxebarria. Labayru Fundazioa Photographic Archive.
Eguen Zuri —literally, ‘Festive Thursday’— refers to the Thursday before Shrove Sunday, in other words, the Thursday after the so-called Basaratoste. These two celebrations mark the beginning of the carnival cycle in Bizkaia.
The mentioned ritual outing to the woods known as Basaratoste [See a previous post titled Txitxiburruntzi, Sasikoipetsu, Basaratuste, Kanporamartxo. Gearing up for carnival], among other denominations, would be widely welcomed across large areas of Bizkaia. The feast of Eguen Zuri, is limited to the surroundings of Durango, Mount Oiz and Arrankudiaga. According to Resurrección M.ª de Azkue, north of Mount Oiz the observance vanished by the beginning of the 20th century. In and around Durango, however, it experienced different realities: some localities have maintained it without interruption until the present day, a handful of them lost it forever, and others recovered it with restored fervour in the 1980s after some years of oblivion. (more…)
Music-and-dance event enlivened by the group Aiko. Iñaki de Andrés.
St James’ Square in Bilbao. Last Saturday of the month. 21:00 hours. Following the tradition of yesteryear, a dance would be held in this charming corner of Bilbao, were it not that we are in the midst of a global pandemic. Should we place our hundred-year-old grandmother in the middle of the square, what would she think? She would probably enjoy seeing so many people dancing, but would she know how to dance with them? I would say she would not. She might feel as if she were somewhere else, far from the dear city where she grew up. And with good reason. The Bilbao of today is not the Bilbao of her youth. The city has changed, just as the way its peoples dance and the music repertoire played in its squares have changed. That is what these lines are about. (more…)
Resurrection Sunday in Lanestosa (Bizkaia). Josu Larrinaga Zugadi.
Several weeks ago we concerned ourselves with the life cycle of us humans in traditional society [See The cycle of life]; on this occasion we shall attempt to outline the transmission wheel of the chronological passing of the years while distinguishing workdays from holidays.
As we pointed out in that previous post, we are for sure influenced by geographical structure, social context and historical time, all personal or collective activity within the cycle of everyday life (be it a working or a non-working day) being marked by a set of rituals meant to promote its success. Traditionally conceived as cyclical processes repeated endlessly, they are susceptible to a number of unchanging regularities or constants which have been observed and transmitted by generations. (more…)
Luis Manuel Peña.
In this third post of a three-part series [See The months of the year in Basque (1) and The months of the year in Basque (2)] we place our focus and attention on the last four months of the year.
Irail ‘September’. This is the ‘month or moon of the fern’, from ira ‘fern’ + (h)il ‘month or moon’, also called garoil in some places, from garo, synonym of ira. We have another remarkable and rather controversial name for this month, which is buruil, a diversity of opinions having been generated around it. Curiously enough, its first component buru could mean ‘head or start’ but also ‘finish or end’, and accordingly, some researches, Vinson among others, defend that September would once upon a time have been the first month of the Basque agricultural calendar, whereas others, such as Wagner, Campión or Caro Baroja himself, argue that it would have been the last. In an attempt to come to terms with such divergent interpretations, we shall us paraphrase Caro Baroja: “it is clear that some months would, at first, not correspond exactly to current Latin ones”. (more…)
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