Ankou is a personification of death in Breton mythology as well as in Cornish and Norman French folklore.[1]
Ankou is also known as "Aräwn".
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This character is reported by Anatole Le Braz, writer and legends collector of the 19th century. Here is what he wrote about the Ankou in his best-seller "The Legend of Death":
There are many tales involving Ankou, who appears as a man or skeleton wearing a cloak and wielding a scythe and in some stories he is described as a shadow that looks like a man with an old hat and a scythe, often atop a cart for collecting the dead. He is said to wear a black robe with a large hat which conceals his face.[1] According to some, he was the first child of Adam and Eve. Other versions have it that the Ankou is the first dead person of the year (though he is always depicted as adult, and male), charged with collecting the others' soul before he can go to the afterlife. He is said to drive a large, black coach pulled by four black horses; accompanied by two ghostly figures on foot.[1][2]
One tale says that there were three drunk friends walking home one night, when they came across an old man on a rickety cart. Two of the men started shouting at the Ankou, and then throwing stones; when they broke the axle on his cart they ran off.
The third friend felt bad and, wanting to help the Ankou, found a branch to replace the broken axle, and then gave the Ankou his shoe-laces with which to tie it to the cart. The next morning, the two friends who were throwing stones at the Ankou were dead, while the one who stayed to help only had his hair turned white. He would never speak of how it happened.
Ankou is the king of the dead, and his subjects have their own particular paths along which their sacred processions move.[3]
Another origin story is that the Ankou was once a cruel prince who met death during a hunting trip and challenged him to see who could kill a black stag first.[1] Death won the contest and the prince was cursed to roam the earth as a ghoul for all eternity.[1]
Every parish in Brittany is said to have its own Ankou.[1] In Breton tradition, the squealing of railway wheels outside of one's home is supposed to be Karrigell an Ankou or The Wheelbarrow of Ankou.[4] Similarly, the cry of the owl is referred to as Labous an Ankou or The Death Bird.[4] The Ankou is also found on the baptismal font at La Martyre where he is shown holding a human head.[5]
In Ireland the proverb When the Ankou comes, he will not go away empty relates to the legend.[1]
The Ankou was the subject of a story by Wyndham Lewis titled The Death of Ankou (1927).[6] A young tourist in Brittany momentarily takes a blind beggar he meets as an embodiment of the Ankou, but in truth it is he who acts as the Ankou for the beggar, who subsequently dies. Lewis relied on Le Braz for some of the background to the story.[6]
Ankous appear in the MMORPG RuneScape as skinless undead monsters.
In the MMORPG Fly For Fun there is a boss entitled as God of Death, named after Ankou.
The Ankou is also used as a character in the novel Death Most Definite by Trent Jamieson, as a power second to death himself.
The story of the three wizards who make a deal with death (in order to secure the three deathly hallows) in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows can also be viewed as a conceptualisation of Ankou.
Ankou is the title of a short speculative fiction story by Nakia D. Johnson in which a man creates his own Ankou and is later killed by it.[7]
In the Soul series, Zasalamel can wield a Scythe named Ankou.