Cantabrian mythology

Cantabrian stele of Barros.
The Vijanera masquerade, of pre-Roman origin, is an example of the survival of archaic nature cults in Cantabria.

Cantabrian mythology is the collection of myths, teachings, and legends belonging to the Cantabri, a people living in the far north of Spain, adjacent to the Basque area. Celtic cults were partially absorbed and adapted into Roman mythology, blending with legends and traditions from the Cantabrian Mountains. In many instances, the dilution of details through oral tradition or the selectivity that Roman historians exercised in recording only cults and divinities that were similar to theirs attributed to the loss of original meanings behind traditions. This Romanization, and later the ascendancy of Christendom transformed the pagan rites, achieving religious syncretism, and amalgamating the various belief systems.

Divinities

Among the myths that still persist as a substrate of Cantabrian tradition are the cults to great protective divinities, such as Sun worship, (evident in the Cantabrian Steles), and the cult of fire.[1] The Cantabrians also worshiped a supreme divinity-father which in Roman times was associated with Jupiter and the cult of the Sun, and later with the Christian God.[2]

Considering the marked warlike disposition of the Cantabrians, there was a god of war, subsequently identified as the Roman Mars, to whom they offered sacrifices of male goats, horses, or large numbers of prisoners, as recorded by Strabo, Horace and Silius Italicus .[3][4][5] These hecatombs were accompanied by the drinking of the still warm blood of the horses,[6] in communion.

et laetum equino sanguine Concanum
— Horace. Carm. III 4. v29-36

The ancient Cantabrians believed these animals were sacred.[7] Some link this ritual closely with the Celtic variant of the god Mars and that these animals represented his reincarnation.[8][9]

The human sacrifices among the northern peoples are also mentioned by Saint Martin of Braga[10] and they have the same values of redemption and prediction as they do for the other Celts in Gaul, where they were very frequent. The victims entrails were examined, the bodies covered with thin tunics, and the right hand cut off and consecrated to the gods. The future was predicted depending on the way the victim fell, and the condition of the bodies entrails.[11]

There were also fertility mother goddesses related to the Moon, important to largely rural Cantabrian environment, influencing the phases of sowing and gathering of the crops.

The Celtic cult to a god of the sea was assimilated to that of the Roman Neptune; a statuette of this deity, but with features of the original Cantabrian divinity, was found in Castro Urdiales.

The ancient Cantabrians believed in the immortality of the spirit, and cremation predominated for those who did not die in combat. Fallen soldiers lay in the battlefield until vultures opened their entrails to take their souls to the afterlife and reunite in glory with their ancestors. This practice is recorded in the engravings of the Cantabrian stele of Zurita.

Sacrifice played a major role in the complex Cantabrian society as a means to fulfill the divine will, through sacrifice of the individual for the collective good. In a warring society, immolation was not considered as primitive or barbarian but as the strong determination required from an individual to commit sacrifice gave it a great importance. An example of this was the devotio, in which a leader or general would offer himself as a sacrifice to the gods in battle to buy victory for his army.[12]

Telluric and arboreal mythology

Torre Bermeja (2.400 m) and Peña Santa (Sacred Mount) (2.596 m),in Picos de Europa.
Yew berries. The tree may be the most representative of Cantabria and has often been planted near buildings.
Elder flowers.
The Trapajones, entities of nature.
Cantabrian oak forest.

Mythology connected to the worship of Gaia, Mother Earth, exists through the divinization of animals, trees, mountains and waters as elementary spirits; beliefs common to peoples who received Celtic influences.

Places like Pico Dobra, in the valley of Besaya, have evidence of sacred sites since pre-Roman times; there is an altar dedicated to the god Erudinus, dated to 399 CE, demonstrating that in Cantabria, these rites persisted after the adoption of Christianity as official religion of the Roman Empire. In the same way place names Peña Sagra ("Sacred Mount"), Peña Santa ("Saint Mount"), Mozagro (Montem sacrum = Sacred Mount) or Montehano (montem fanum = Mount of the Sanctuary)[13] indicate that they have been considered sacred places from antiquity.

Also divinized were the rivers and bodies of water. At Mount Cildá there was an area dedicated to the mother goddess Mater Deva, a personification of the river Deva. At Otañes there was a ritual dedicated to the nymph of a spring with medicinal properties. Pliny the Elder[14] mentions the existence in Cantabria of three intermittent springs, the Tamaric Fountains worshiped at by the Cantabrians as a source of prophetic omens[15] Suetonius, in a story about the life of Galba, points out as a symbol of good divination having found, during his stay at Cantabria, 12 axes in a lake.[16] They were left there as votive offerings which suggest a tradition of cults to the lakes.[17] These offerings to the waters of stips, bronze coins of low value, as well as other pieces of higher value such as denari, aurei and solidi, appear at La Hermida, Peña Cutral, Alceda and at the Híjar river.

The forests were also divinized through a cult with clear Celtic influences. Some species of trees were especially respected; the yew and the oak. The yew is the most emblematic species of Cantabria and it was venerated by Cantabrians in antiquity, forming part of some of their rituals. We know by the accounts of Silius, Florus, Pliny and Isidore of Seville, that Cantabrians committed suicide with poison they got from the leaves of this tree,[18] because they preferred death rather than slavery.[19][20][21][22] It is usual to find them at town squares, cemeteries, churches, chapels, palaces and big houses as they were considered a witness tree.[23]

The oak is a sacred species for druids, from which they collected mistletoe. It is a species surrounded by folklore, symbolic and magic beliefs in Cantabria, being frequently used as a Maypole, the pole that presides over festivities, around which people dance to celebrate the rebirth of vegetation in Spring. The oak symbolized the union between sky and earth, as the axis of the world. As they tend to attract lightning, they often played a role in ceremonies to attract rain and fire.

Oaks, beeches, hollyoaks and yews were used as places of tribal meetings where religious and secular laws were taught. Until recent times it was usual to celebrate open meetings under centennial trees (the meetings of Trasmiera gathered together at Hoz de Anero, Ribamontán al Monte, under a great hollyoak that still stands).

Significant dates

In Cantabrian mythology there were dates that held significance. For this reason during the summer solstice, the "night is magic". Tradition says that the Caballucos del Diablu (Damselflies, literally "Devil's little horses") and the witches lose their powers after dusk and the curanderos gain control over them; plants like the four-leaf clover, the fruit of the elderberry, the leaves of the willow, the common juniper or the tree heath cure and bring happiness if they are collected at dawn. Around Christmas (winter solstice) there were ritual ceremonies, the remains of ancient cults to trees, fire and water. Around those dates the sources of the rivers and the balconies were dressed with flowers and people danced and jumped over fires.

Also important were specific moments of the day, particularly twilight. Ancient Cantabrians talked about "The Sun of the Dead", referring to that last part of the day when the Sun was still visible and that they thought was sent by the dead. They believed that it marked the moment in which the dead came back to life and several authors have related it to a solar cult.[24]

Mythological creatures

Cantabrian people have not only telluric and natural divinities, but also fabulous beings with different aspects that people feared or loved and have legends and histories of their own. There are many of them in Cantabrian mythology; the most important are:

There are other fabulous beings that populate the mythological pantheon of Cantabria; the Ventolín, the Caballucos del Diablu, the Nuberu, the Musgosu, the Culebre, and the Ramidreju. Or beautiful legends such as the Sirenuca ("Little Mermaid"), a beautiful but disobedient and spoiled young lady whose vice was climbing the most dangerous cliffs of Castro Urdiales to sing with the waves and was transformed into a water nymph due to this behavior. Another popular legend is the Fish-man, the story of a man from Liérganes who loved to swim and got lost in the Miera river and was eventually found in the Bay of Cádiz, transformed into a strange aquatic being.

Interpretations of Cantabrian mythology

Consideration of the mythical beings and legends in Cantabrian culture suggests a societal desire for the expression of fear and for the quality of courage to endure their hostile and dangerous environment.

Even today some Cantabrians worship the Anjanas, not being converted to Christianity or other modern religions. These people follow their ancestral beliefs that some gifts are granted by these good fairies of the mountains, and even today the Ojáncanu is used to scare the children when they are mischievous. But this world of meanings and values has become diluted little by little with the advance of the modernity and time, giving place to new urban legends and forgetting the old deities.

Only now has Cantabrian mythology attracted the interest of scholars, after the collection of legends, enriched with oral tradition compiled by the writer Manuel Llano Merino (1898–1938) and those of several other writers like Adriano García-Lomas were published.

References

  1. ↑ bonfires of Saint John, coincident with solstice of summer, could be a reminiscence
  2. ↑ a beautiful bronze sculpture was discovered at Herrera de Camargo
  3. ↑ Estr. III,3,7
  4. ↑ Carm. III,4,34
  5. ↑ Silius III, 361
  6. ↑ Tacitus considers them by the Germans as ministers of the gods:
    se (sacerdotes) enim ministros deorum, illos (equos) coscious putant
    — Germ. X
  7. ↑ Julio Caro Baroja suggests the possibility of the existence of an equestrian deity among Hispanian Celts similar to that of the other European Celts.
  8. ↑ E. Thevenot. Sur les traces des Mars Celtiques, Bruges, 1995.
  9. ↑ At Numantia, these representations of the horse-god are decorated with solar signs.
  10. ↑ De correctione rusticorum VIII
  11. ↑ José María Blázquez Martínez (1977). "La religiosidad de los pueblos hispanos vista por los autores griegos y latinos" (in Spanish). Retrieved 2007-09-08.
  12. ↑ Juan Carlos Cabria. "Mitos y leyendas de Cantabria. El sacrificio, vía de unión con la divinidad" (in Spanish). Otra Realidad. Retrieved 2007-07-12.
  13. ↑ Actually there is an old monastery whose origins date back to the 14th century and where there already was a small chapel-
  14. ↑ Plin.,NH XXXI 23-24
  15. ↑ According to Pliny there would be three close fountains whose waters got together in one pond and stop circulating from 12 to 20 days, interpreting these discontinuity of the flow as a negative sign.
  16. ↑ Suet., Galba, VIII 13
  17. ↑ A. Schulten. Los cántabros y astures y su guerra con Roma. Madrid. 1943
  18. ↑ The leaves of the yews and its seed, present in its red berries, contain a very toxic alkaloid, the taxine, that provokes hypotension and cardiac arrests if consumed.
  19. ↑ Silius III, 328
  20. ↑ Florus II, 33, 50
  21. ↑ Pliny XVI, 50
  22. ↑ Isidore Book XVII, 9, 25
  23. ↑ It is worth mentioning the presence of millenary yews as the one that exists next to the pre-Roman church of Saint Mary of Lebeña and under which the town councils took place. This tree, present in the Inventory of Singular Trees of Cantabria Archived May 12, 2008, at the Wayback Machine. , has been severwly damaged by a recent gale.
  24. ↑ Juan Carlos Cabria. "El culto solar II" (in Spanish). Retrieved 2008-06-20.
  25. ↑ Beings similar to the Ojáncanu or the Ojáncana are found in other pantheons such as the Extremenian mithology (the Jáncanu or Pelujáncanu and the Jáncanas, where is also evident the similar denominations , "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-02-03. Retrieved 2008-06-20., ,) or the Basque mithology (Tartalo or Torto, among others.)

Bibliography

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