countenance, and walks upright like a
man; but he surpasses the stag in activity,
and is covered with long smooth hair.
He foresees tempests, and at such times
cries aloud, for he knows that he must
endure the hardest buffets of the elements.
Occasionally, he forewarns the herdsman
of the approaching storm, and woe to the
unlucky wight who neglects or despises
the caution! Despite his formidable
appearance and manners, Bassa Jaon seems
to be rather a good-natured personage,
who does not resent liberties. Once
having fallen, like the fairy, into the trap
of a pair of trousers, he allowed himself
to be tricked into revealing the secret of
the previously unknown art of welding
iron. Some have supposed that Bassa Jaon
is a legendary reminiscence of the
ourangoutang of Africa, where the Basques are
said formerly to have sojourned.

A beautiful stalactite grotto at Arièze,
is said to be the place of burial of Roland,
the hero of Roncevaux. Around the name
of this paladin cluster a hundred legends.
He it was who dashed from the mountain
summits, the enormous masses of rock now
lying on the lower ridges; he carved the
gigantic crescent upon the immense wall of
the Marboré; his horse could leap from hill to
hill, clearing at a bound the abyss between.
At Lourdes, where the steed once threw
his rider, two ponds still preserve the form
of his foot and knee; and on one of the
mountains of the Arrens gorge, the
impression of his huge body was left by a similar
catastrophe. It may still be seen, as well
as his footprint, and the two sabre-cuts
which he aimed at the rock in his
indignation at his discomfiture.

It is scarcely necessary to say that most
of the Pyrenean lakes are of supernatural
origin. The Lake of Ourrec, or, as some
have it, the Izabi Lake, is thus accounted
for. The hills of Davantaïgne were
infested by an enormous serpent, which
devoured the herdsmen and flocks of the
valley of Argélès; a blacksmith of the
village of Arbouix hit upon an ingenious
method of destroying the monster; he laid
upon the ground, masses of red-hot iron;
the serpent swallowed them; intense thirst
followed; he drank to bursting; burst, and
the lake was the result!

The Basques still believe in a three-
headed, or triple-throated, flying dragon,
whose appearance betokens some impending
calamity: such as war, cholera, or
famine. The most common of the lake
legends, however, tells of a heavenly
traveller going, in human form, from house
to house, imploring charity. Sometimes
he proved to be Jesus Christ, sometimes
God himself. Rejected by the rich, he is
succoured by some poor family, who are
miraculously recompensed, and saved from
the waters which overwhelm and destroy
their wicked neighbours. The details of
this legend vary in different places. At
the Lake of Lourdes, a child was in the
favoured hut, and a rock on the brink in the
shape of a cradle, is pointed out. At
another place, the compassionate woman who
entertained the divine guest, kept for
herself the first and largest cake she baked;
she was allowed to escape to the
mountains, on the condition imposed upon Lot's
wife; but the awful noise behind, inducing
her to turn her head, she was changed into
a rock of the shape of a long-bearded goat;
hence the name, Barbazan. A similar
legend belongs to the well-known
mountain called La Maladetta, the Accursed.
We give it in Monsieur Cordier's
picturesque words: " On this mountain, covered
till then with the most beautiful pastures,
some shepherds were leading their flocks.
Our Saviour came to them. He was
passing through the earth, proving the
hearts of men. The shepherds would not
receive him; in savage derision they set
their sharp-fanged dogs upon the
God-man; but oh prodigy! all turns to ice—
men, dogs, and flocks; the shepherd with
his scornful brow and his long crook; the
dogs, heated with the chase, excited, with
gaping mouths; the fat grazing flocks, ' in
number like the hair of the head'— all
became ice. All movement, all joy, all rage,
all insult, was arrested in an instant, and
long afterwards those who saw the great
glacier could still count, one by one, the victims
of that terrible justice; the sheep appeared
like waves; the shepherds, like barren
points, were still erect, with uplifted crook,
with proud and threatening brow. They
could be seen long ago, but time has
triumphed: many winters have hidden them
under fresh coverings of ice; they sleep
for ever buried beneath that frozen azure
mirror; and only superstition can still
discern, with lynx-eyed faith, the eternal
prison of the pitiless herdsmen beneath
those numberless frozen layers."

The most pathetic superstition of all is
reserved for the last. It tells its own
melancholy story of the penury and want,
and sharp struggle for existence, too often
the sad birthright of the unhappy children
of the mountains. The hero of the tale is