Eguzki

In the village of Mañaria, in Bizkaia, it was bad manners to let the sun go down without a word. Somebody in the household had to turn to the west, where the light lay red along the ridge, and say agur. Goodbye. If nobody did, the sun went home to her mother in tears, and no family wanted that on its conscience.

Her name is Eguzki, and she is one of the plainest and oldest figures in Basque belief. She has no temple, no statue and almost no story. What she has is a set of manners. All across the Basque Country, people who would never have called themselves sun worshippers spoke to the sun every evening as if she were a member of the family, and an elderly and respected one at that.

In the farmsteads of Elosua, Soraluze and the Arratia valley the evening formula began by saying that Grandmother Sun was going to her mother. Around Gernika she was called holy and blessed and told to go to her mother as she sank. In the mountains of Navarre she was simply greeted as grandmother. Another version, recorded under the Christian name Santa Clara, sent her off to her mother with the hope that she would come back tomorrow if the weather was fine. That last clause is the voice of farmers.

The mother in these greetings is the earth. Eguzki is the earth’s daughter, born out of the ground in the east each morning and taken back into it each evening in the west, and her sister the moon makes the same journey on the night shift. By the time the sayings were written down, the people of Mañaria were explaining that the mother was the Virgin Mary, Andra Mari. In some tales from the Goierri and from Navarre the earth herself is called Mari. The old relationship and the church one had settled into the same sentence, and nobody seems to have minded.

That she is both a daughter and a grandmother is not a puzzle that the tradition ever tried to solve. Grandmother is a title of respect here, the word for the oldest woman of the house. She is not always a woman either. In Zuberoa, where the sun is called Eki, a child who lost a milk tooth would throw it and ask the sun to send a finer one in its place, and that rhyme speaks to the sun as a man.

What happens to her between dusk and dawn is left mostly to inference. She goes into the earth in the west and comes out of it in the east, so she must travel underneath. A tale from Ataun gives a glimpse of what people imagined at the far end. A traveller with a rooster comes to a country where the men go out before dawn and beat on a rock with sticks, working to open the day so that the sun can get through. His rooster crows, the day arrives without the labour, and they pay him a measure of gold for the bird.

Nobody describes her face. The names do the describing instead. Eguzki itself probably means little more than the light of day, built on the same root as egun, the word for day. In Ataun and Berastegi the bright disc was called the Eye of God, and the light it gave was the eye of the sun. Some have read those names as the trace of an older picture, in which the sky is a turning vault with a hole in it and a great fire burning behind. It is an attractive idea. It is also a guess.

On an ordinary morning her work is simple. Light comes over the eastern hill, warms the stone of a farmhouse front that was built to face it, reaches into the porch and touches the dried thistle nailed beside the door. That thistle is the eguzkilore, the flower of the sun, a round silver head with rays that stands in for her through the hours she is away.

Her real power shows at the edge of the night. The dark belongs to other beings, and daylight ends their authority at a stroke. A witch caught by the sunrise before she has put away the tools of her craft is left unable to move. Spirits that have a hold on a person lose it when a sunbeam lands on them. In a story from Mandarrain, a shepherd found a golden comb at the mouth of a cave and took it. The lamia who owned it came down the mountain after him, fast, and was almost on his back when the first rays of morning touched his clothes. She stopped. She told him to thank the sun, and went back up to her cave.

Signs of her are everywhere in Basque carving: circles, five-pointed stars, the curling four-armed lauburu. The gold monstrance on a church altar is called iguzkisaindu, the holy sun. The month of June is ekhaina, the sun’s month, and the bonfires of the summer solstice burn in her season.

Her limits are as clear as her strengths. She cannot stay. Every evening she has to go back into the ground, and for those hours the house has only a thistle on the door. She can also be hurt, by nothing worse than rudeness. A power that drives off every evil of the night will still go home crying if no one says goodbye.

All of this was gathered in the twentieth century, village by village, chiefly by the priest and ethnographer José Miguel de Barandiarán of Ataun. He found greetings, names and habits. He did not find a genealogy of gods or a creation story with the sun in it, and none has turned up since.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Eguzki in Basque mythology?

Eguzki is the sun in Basque tradition, treated as a holy living being and the daughter of the earth. Country people greeted her aloud at sunset and called her grandmother. Her light was believed to take away the power of witches and night spirits.

Is Eguzki male or female?

Eguzki is usually female. She is called grandmother in the sunset greetings of Bizkaia, Gipuzkoa and Navarre, and she is described as the daughter of the earth. A teething rhyme from Zuberoa is the exception, because it addresses the sun as a man.

Where does Eguzki go at night?

Eguzki goes back into the earth, her mother, when she sets in the west, and comes out again in the east at dawn. In Mañaria people said her mother was the Virgin Mary. A tale from Ataun describes men beating a rock with sticks before dawn to open the day for the sun.

What did the Basques say to the sun at sunset?

In Elosua, Soraluze and Arratia people said that Grandmother Sun was going to her mother. Around Gernika they called the sun holy and blessed and told her to go to her mother. In Mañaria they said agur, meaning goodbye, because otherwise the sun was said to go home weeping.

How does Eguzki protect people from evil spirits?

Sunlight ends the power of the beings that rule the night. A witch caught by sunrise before putting away the tools of her craft cannot move, and in a legend from Mandarrain a lamia gave up chasing a shepherd when the first rays touched his clothes. At night the eguzkilore, a dried thistle called the flower of the sun, is fixed to the door in her place.

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