Ilargi

Also Known As: also Illargi, Ilhargi, Hilargi, Irargi, Irergi, Idargi, Idergi, Ilergi, Ellergi, Itargi, Iretargi, Ilazki, Ilaski, Ilarri, Argizari, Argizagi, and Roncalese Goiko, “the one above”; addressed in spoken formulas as Ilargi Amandrea, “Grandmother Moon”; from an older *(h)ile, “moon, month”, plus argi, “light”
Region/Culture: Southern Europe
Mythos: Basque Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: She is the moon itself, female, spoken to aloud as an elderly kinswoman, and her light is held to fall on the night world of souls rather than on the living.
Role in Mythos: She is one of the two daughters of the earth, the sister of the sun, crossing the sky each night and returning at dawn into her mother’s body.
Relation to Humans: People greeted her out loud when she came up over the eastern mountains and put the same question to her every time, asking what news there was in the sky. Her waxing and waning also told them when to sow, when to cut, when to bottle, and when to leave a thing alone for another fortnight.

The moon clears the ridge east of a Gipuzkoan farmhouse and somebody standing in the doorway speaks to her. It is not quite a prayer and not quite small talk. It is a question, the same one every time, put to her the way you would put it to an old woman coming up the lane with a basket on her hip. Grandmother Moon, what news in the sky? In the version collected at Oñati the verse supplies her answer as well, and the answer is warm and faintly evasive. Good news in the sky, now and always.

That exchange is close to the whole of what survives of Ilargi, and it is a great deal more than it looks.

The word comes first, because in this case the word is the evidence. Basque has called the moon ilargi since the language began appearing in print in the first half of the sixteenth century. Bernat Etxepare, in 1545, has God say that he made the earth and the heavens, the sun, the moon and all the fruits. From there the word runs through every dialect but one, collecting variants as it goes: illargi, ilhargi, hilargi, irargi, irergi, idargi, ilergi, ellergi, iretargi, ilazki. In the Roncal valley they dispensed with the moon-word altogether and called her goiko, the one above, which is the term a Roncalese translator reached for in the passage where the sun goes dark and the moon gives no light.

Split the compound and you get il plus argi. Argi is light and has never been disputed by anybody. Il is where the trouble starts. To a run of nineteenth-century philologists it was obviously hil, the Basque word for dead, and they said so in chorus. Chaho read the name as dead light. Mahn and Uhlenbeck read it as light of the dead. Van Eys made it light of death, Vinson simply dead light. It is a gorgeous reading, it fits everything else about her, and it is still the first thing most people will tell you about the name. It is also, according to the Basque Academy’s own dictionary and to R. L. Trask’s etymological work, a mistake. The first element is an older word for the moon and for the month, surviving now only buried inside compounds: ilgora for the waxing, ilbehera for the waning, il by itself for one lunation. The Academy goes as far as recommending that il and ilargi be written without the initial h, specifically to keep them clear of hil and its family of deaths.

And yet the association was already there in the practice, sitting in plain view, before anyone went hunting for it in the grammar. One of the High Navarrese words for the moon is argizari. Argizari is also the word for wax. From it comes the argizaiola, the wax board: a flat carved plank, vaguely human in outline, with a long taper of beeswax coiled around its shaft. The woman of the house lit it on the family’s grave slab inside the parish church, on Sundays and above all at All Saints, and turned the board slowly with her thumb as the coil burned down. Cold flagstones, the low sweetness of warm beeswax, a small yellow flame a few inches above the stone, and beneath the stone the family dead. The same word does both jobs. It names the thing in the sky and it names the candle lit for the people under the floor.

The cosmology around her was written down late, mostly by José Miguel de Barandiarán, who spent decades taking beliefs from rural informants across the Basque provinces and who stated flatly that the moon, like the sun, is female in Basque mythology. Both are daughters of the earth. Both spend the day or the night crossing the sky and both go home at the end of it into their mother’s body, which is why at sunset people would tell the sun to go to her mother. Nobody recorded a matching farewell for Ilargi. She gets a greeting rather than a goodbye.

Her origin belongs to the story told about how the lights were made at all. People in the first days were harried in the dark by things that came up out of the ground, and the earth answered by giving them the moon. It was not enough. The creatures learned the moonlight, grew used to it, and came back, so the earth made the sun as well. The spiked white thistle nailed above Basque doorways against exactly those night visitors is called eguzkilore, the flower of the sun, and stands in for the sun’s disc. In the uplands of Goierri the identical thistle is called ilargi-lore and ilargi-belar, moon-flower and moon-herb, and Barandiarán lists it there without ceremony as the magic flower. One plant, both shifts.

She was never given a face. There is no chariot, no silver bow, no woven robe, nothing an artist could have worked from, and the silence is total rather than partial. What the language offers instead is what she does to a landscape: the flat white on a hillside at two in the morning, hedge shadows laid down as though inked, and the sharp tip of the crescent, which Basque calls her horn and which a Gipuzkoan will tell you a fool is living on the point of. She is also, with no reverence whatsoever, a bald head. A gleaming scalp is an ilargi; a wide one is an illargi handia; a nineteenth-century Bizkaian poem gives a character the name Martin-Illargi because he went bald at forty. Goddesses do not usually end up as a nickname for a shiny pate.

Her real power was over time and therefore over work. In some dialects Monday is ilen, the moon’s day, built exactly as Latin built dies lunae and English built Monday. Her phases ruled the calendar of a farm with the authority of law. Do not cut grass at the new moon, runs one Navarrese instruction. Txakoli was bottled on the waning. A Bizkaian proverb keeps the year straight by her: old moon at Christmas, new moon at Easter. And she could hand out luck as well as timing, since the highest compliment Azkue collected for a fortunate man was that he had the moon sitting on top of his bread oven.

What she could also do was damage. To be struck by the moon, ilargiak jo, is to be a lunatic, and the vocabulary around it is unusually thick: ilargi-jo, ilargi-eri, ilargialdi for the fits themselves, ilargi-aldarte for the moods. When Basque translators came to the lunatics carried to Jesus in Matthew’s gospel, the word waiting for them was ilhargi-joak, the moonstruck. Her other limit is simply the machinery of the sky. She thins, she vanishes for a night or two, and in eclipse she goes out altogether, illargi-artilun, moon-darkness, with the earth standing in the way.

What she never acquired was a plot. No marriage, no quarrel, no abduction, no descent and no death. Set her beside Mari inside the mountain at Anboto, with her fires and her golden comb and her seven years underground, and Ilargi has nothing that could be called an adventure. She has a form of address, four lines of verse, an agricultural calendar, a category of illness and a wax candle burning on a grave slab. The tradition appears to have found that sufficient. She still comes up over the eastern mountains every night, and somebody still asks her for the news.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Ilargi in Basque mythology?

Ilargi is the moon, treated in Basque tradition as a female divinity and addressed in spoken formulas as Ilargi Amandrea, Grandmother Moon. She is one of the two daughters of the earth, the sister of the sun, and she returns into her mother’s body at the end of each crossing of the sky. The word ilargi is also simply the ordinary Basque noun for the moon.

Does Ilargi really mean “light of the dead”?

No, although the reading is very widespread. Nineteenth-century philologists including Uhlenbeck, Mahn and Van Eys split the name as hil, “dead”, plus argi, “light”, but the Basque Academy’s dictionary and R. L. Trask’s etymological work derive the first element instead from an older word for the moon and the month. The Academy even recommends spelling il and ilargi without an initial h so they are not confused with hil, “to die”.

What did Basques say to the moon?

When the moon rose over the eastern mountains people greeted her aloud with the question “Ilargi amandrea, zeruan zer berri?”, meaning “Grandmother Moon, what news in the sky?” A version collected at Oñati adds the reply: good news in the sky, now and always. The formula was recorded from rural informants by José Miguel de Barandiarán and survives in Basque popular song.

What is an argizaiola and what does it have to do with the moon?

An argizaiola is a carved wooden board wound with a coil of beeswax, lit by the woman of a Basque household on the family grave slab inside the parish church and turned as the wax burns down. Its name comes from argizari, which means wax and is also one of the Navarrese words for the moon. That single word covering both the moon and the candle burned for the dead is probably what made the “light of the dead” reading of Ilargi’s name so persuasive.

Did the moon have power over people’s lives in Basque belief?

Yes, mainly over timing and over the mind. Her phases governed when to sow, cut, fell and bottle, and Basque proverbs fix the farming year by the old and new moon, while in some dialects Monday is ilen, the moon’s day. She could also strike people: ilargiak jo, “struck by the moon”, means to be a lunatic, and Basque translators used ilhargi-joak for the moonstruck in the gospels.