Who, or what is the Tartaro? "Oh! you mean the man with one eye in
the middle of his forehead," is the prompt and universal answer. The
Tartaro is the Cyclops, the sun's round eye, k'uklwy. But the word
Tartaro has apparently nothing to do with this. M. Cerquand, in his
"Legendes et Récits Populaires du Pays Basque," derives the word from
Tartare, Tartar, in the same way as the French word Ogre is said to
be derived from Hongrois, Ugri. The only objection to this highly
probable derivation (made still more probable by a Souletin variation,
Moiriak) is the comparatively late date (the 13th century) of the
first appearance of the Tartars in Europe. [9] It is besides perfectly
true that in many tales the Tartaro replaces, and is identical with
the giant or ogre; but this does not appear to us to be the original
conception of this mythological monster, nor have we ever heard from
an unlettered Basque such a description of him. To them he is simply
a Cyclops--a huge man, with an eye in the centre of his forehead.
It is an interesting question--Is there any connection between
the Basque Tartaro and the Cyclops of the Odyssey and of the
classics? First, we must remark that the Cyclops legend is not peculiar
either to the Greek and Latin writers, or even to the Aryan nations;
e.g., in his communication of the Tartaro legends to the Société des
Sciences de Bayonne, M. d'Abaddie relates how he heard the tale told
in June, 1843, in Eastern Africa, in Lat. N. 9.2, E. Lon. 34.48, by
a man who had never before quitted the country. It is then only the
special form of the legend, and not the primary idea, that the Greeks
may have borrowed from the Basques. But there is this to observe--that,
with both Greeks and Latins, the Cyclops myth is an occidental and
not an oriental one, and is more strictly localised than almost any
other. This may be accounted for by saying that the sun's great fiery
eye is rather that of the setting than of the rising sun; that the
red-hot stake is the ruddy mountain peak, or the tall fir-trunk,
seen against the western horizon, and illumined by his descending
rays. But in the stories of Theocritus and Ovid, where the sun-myth
is not so apparent, the home of the Cyclops is still Sicily. Our first
Tartaro legend reads very like a rough outline of Ovid's story of "Acis
and Galatea." Now, W. Von Humboldt in his "Prüfung der Untersuchung
über die Urbewohner Hispaniens vermittelst der Vaskischen Sprache"
(Berlin, 1821), in cap. xlv., p. 167, and, again, con. vii., p. 178,
arguing on quite different grounds, places Sicily as the most easterly
habitation of the Basques within historic times. [10] We leave it then
to classical scholars to consider whether the Italic races in Magna
Græcia and Sicily may not have come in contact with the Basques there,
and from them have adopted their special form of the Cyclops legend.
As we said above, the Tartaro sometimes replaces the giant or the
ogre; at other times we find him as Basa-Jaun, or even as an animal,
substituted for Acheria, the fox. He is, in his proper form, a huge
one-eyed giant, occasionally a cannibal, but not without a rough
"bonhomie" when satiated with food and drink. Intellectually far below
the feebler race of mankind, he is invariably beaten in his contests
with them, notwithstanding his enormous strength; he loses all his
wagers, and is generally lured on to commit involuntary suicide. In
some aspects he reminds one of Milton's "Lubbar Fiend," and in his
constant defeats and being constantly outwitted, recals one of the
types of the Devil in mediæval story. At times he appears in gentler
guise, as when he aids the young prince to his rights, and supplies
Petit Yorge with the means of victory over the Heren-Suge. What the
talking ring is which appears in so many of these stories we confess
ourselves unable to interpret; it is found in the Keltic, but, as
far as we are aware, not in the classic legends.
One peculiarity of the Basque, and especially of the Tartaro legends,
is that the hero of them is so often a madman, an idiot, or a
fool. If we can trust our memory, the case is the same in the Slavonic
representatives of Odysseus. [11] But the Basques seem to dwell upon
and to repeat the idea in a peculiar way; they ring the changes on
all states, from the wild madman, like the Scandinavian Berserker,
through the idiot and fool, to the mere blockhead and ninny. Errua,
Enuchenta, Ergela, Sosua, Tontua, are terms employed to designate
the heroes who have sometimes, to our modern apprehension, little of
the idiot or fool, except the name. Can it be that the power which
put out the sun's fiery eye was looked upon as a beneficent being
in a burning tropic land, while, as the legend travelled northward,
the act seemed more like that of madness, or of senseless stupidity?
One type of these Tartaro tales will at once recal Grimm's "Valiant
Little Tailor," and some of the more modern versions of "Jack the
Giant-Killer." But though the incidents are identical, it is hardly
possible that they can be thus borrowed. Several of our narrators
were utterly ignorant of French, and learnt the tale as children
from old people, who died a few years since at upwards of 80. The
first translation of Grimm's Tales into French was published in the
year 1845.