Basque ethnography at a glance

By Vincent van Zalinge on Unsplash.

Peoples have forever, since prehistoric times, searched for means to guarantee their protection, from dances to human sacrifices and all sorts of rituals. Without looking further back into history, the need to protect ourselves, our family, our house, our properties… is as vital at this moment of pandemic as ever before, always bearing in mind a logical evolution.

Noteworthy among the multiple rites of protection, currently extinguished but still alive in my memory, because I have first-hand knowledge of it, is the use of feet, or hooves, to be precise, of hunted badgers (Meles meles), nailed to the door of shepherds’ sheds across the Pyrenees in Navarre and the northern part of Aragon. Blackened and dried by the passing of time, the lower limbs were often accompanied with other protective elements associated to Christianity, with the double conviction that they would deliver its dwellers from evil, besides being a trusted source of good luck, which is precisely what differentiated them from a cross made of twigs, a religious medal, or a stemless carline thistle, known as eguzki-lorea, to give some of the most popular examples.

To better appreciate and understand it, we ought to place ourselves in the shoes of a former shepherd, living in the mountains, far away from population centres all year round, in the face of extreme situations, and with no food to feed themselves on but what mother nature offered them. They hunted for food; rather, they hunted for survival. That folks should live so is now unthinkable.

Take my father, Román Hualde, for instance, a shepherd from Roncal born in 1907. From the age of eleven, he spent his entire live in the mountain with his flock, observing and learning from nature. Bears, his great rivals, would prey on sheep in the autumn to fatten themselves up for the winter, the amount of body fat stored in their hump, or ‘larder’, having major consequences for individual survival and reproductive success.

So my father employed that same technique with the same purpose. And among all that the natural world in the surroundings provided for him, badgers could indeed furnish him with the fat that he needed. Thus, they became his main prey.

For whoever does not know, when a badger bites you —and the same happens with the ocellated lizard, or gardatxoa—it will not let go. Only by killing it would you break free from it. Shepherds were well aware of that; moreover, they used it in their own ‘benefit’ —a word I enclose in quotes because not everyone will approve of it—.

Being a good observer of nature, Román —he, my father, exemplifies the life of every shepherd in the region—, mastered the task of badger hunting. He would track them and locate the whereabouts of their underground burrows, distinguishing between burrows dug by badgers and foxes. He waited for just the right moment and introduced his hand in the hole when the animal approached the entrance. Fast as a bullet, the badger would attack the intruder and bite his hand, heading to its ultimate undoing. The shepherd would drag it out of the burrow and finally kill it with either a stick or a knife. Its body fat ensured his survival over the winter. Every part of it was used up but the feet.

Badgers’ feet were nailed to the shed door not as trophies but as lucky charms to protect its dwellers until the following year, when they would be replaced. Needless to say, all fingertips were missing from my father’s hands: a high toll taken on him for living.

Fernando Hualde – Ethnographer – Labrit Heritage

Translated by Jaione Bilbao – Ethnography Department – Labayru Fundazioa