Translating a worldview in the longue durée

-

Translating a worldview in the longue durée: TheTale of “The Bear’s Son”Frank, Roslyn Mhttps://iro.uiowa.edu/discovery/delivery/01IOWA_INST:ResearchRepository/12809960620002771?l#13811933600002771

Frank. (2019). Translating a worldview in the longue durée: The Tale of “The Bear’s Son.” University ofIowa. https://doi.org/10.17077/pp.005760

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28509-8_3

Downloaded on 2022/10/04 03:05:34 -0500Copyright © 2018 by Roslyn M FrankFree to read and downloadhttps://iro.uiowa.edu

-

47

Pre-publication version of an article to be published in 2019 in a volume of essays edited by

Adam Głaz, Languages--Cultures--Worldviews: Focus on Translation. London: Palgrave

Macmillan.

Chapter 3

Translating a worldview in the longue durée: The tale of “The Bear’s Son”

Roslyn M. Frank

1. Introduction

Translation is usually understood as the practice of rendering a text written in one language

into another language. That process also requires taking into consideration the cultural

similarities and differences entrenched in each of the languages in question. In what follows

this notion will be expanded to apply to the way that cultural conceptualisations embedded in

a set of folktales have been translated across time and more specifically the way that the

interpretative framework utilised by storytellers and their audiences has changed as the cultural

conceptualisations intrinsic to reception and understanding of meanings of words and actions

in the tales have been altered. These shifts in the worldview are reflected in the modifications

that the texts have undergone across time. In other words, the chapter enters a little explored

terrain, engaging with and addressing not only the question of the role played by folktales in

projecting cultural mindsets, but also their role in constructing, maintaining, and ultimately

deconstructing a worldview indigenous to Europe.

My own relationship to this project goes back to the early 1980s when I began doing

fieldwork in the Basque Country and learning Euskera (Basque). That was when I first

discovered that the Basques used to believe they descended from bears, a belief that had been

transmitted from one generation to the next, only orally, until the latter part of the 20th century

(Frank 2008a; Peillen 1986). The first written evidence for the belief comes from an interview

conducted in the fall of 1983 by the Basque anthropologist Txomin Peillen with the last two

Basque-speaking bear hunters of the Pyrenees, Dominique Prébende and his father Petiri. It

was the 80 year-old Petiri who, after he made sure that that the tape-recorder had been turned

48

off, confided to his Basque-speaking interviewer the following: “Lehenagoko eüskaldünek

gizona hartzetik jiten zela sinhesten zizien,” that is, “In earlier times Basques believed that

humans descended from bears” (Peillen 1986, p. 173).

Subsequently, I spent several decades doing additional fieldwork and research trying

flesh out the implications of this archaic belief in bear-ancestors and the associated ursine

genealogy assigned to humans. It is a worldview that clearly harkens back to a hunter-gatherer

mentality and resonates strongly with the animistic ontologies associated with bear

ceremonialism as it has been practiced in North America and Eurasia.

The aspect of the research discussed in this chapter centers on a pan-European

phenomenon, the tale of “The Bear’s Son,” a folktale whose protagonist is half-human, half-

bear. This is because his mother was a human female and his father was a bear. In times past,

this figure appears to have been viewed as a kind of intermediary, as a kind of “Jesus bear,”

according to one of my informants. Moreover, it will be argued that the tale of “The Bear’s

Son,” along with several other orally transmitted narratives, was a central component of this

much earlier worldview grounded in the belief in ursine ancestors. Nonetheless, as will be

demonstrated, with the passage of time, the underlying significance of the story-line becomes

increasingly obscured. This occurs as the cultural conceptualisations that supported the

interpretative framework slowly fall away and, as a result, key episodes making up the overall

plot end up being separated and viewed as independent tales, mere fragments of the original

narrative. Nevertheless, viewed in the longue durée, these narratives have facilitated the

transmission across time and space of this much older worldview and the belief in bear-

ancestors.

2. Bear-ancestors

As will be demonstrated, in spite of all the attention that variants of the tale of “The Bear’s

Son” has received, no serious consideration has been given to the possibility that the ursine

ancestry of the hero should be interpreted as an indication of the archaic backdrop of the tale

and the underlying cultural conceptualisations associated with it in times past and hence its

earlier animistic interpretative frame, once shared by storytellers and their audiences. Rather,

the tales caught the attention of the group of researchers who have been attempting to discover

pre-textual Märchen traditions in Beowulf and other Germanic “heroic” poetry. For instance,

49

Glosecki draws on parallels found in Native American and Eurasian materials, cultures in

which bears were considered relatives or ancestors (Glosecki 1989; Stitt 1995).

As a result, what has not been fully recognised is the possibility that the persistence of

these tales viewed in the longue durée could be evidence, albeit indirect, of the resilience of an

earlier animistic worldview in which bears were viewed as ancestors and venerated. Moreover,

even though the Christian church spent many centuries attempting to wipe out this ursine-

centered worldview, it survived on the margins, in fragments of folk belief and performance

art as well as firmly embedded in the interpretive frame of the set of folktales under analysis

(Corvino 2013; Lajoux 1996; Pastoureau 2011; Truffaut 2010).

3. Traditional classification of “The Bear’s Son”

The tale of “The Bear’s Son,” along with its variants, is recognised as one of the most widely

diffused European folktales. However, the term utilised, namely, the tale of “The Bear’s Son,”

is an informal one, regularly used to refer to a group of related narratives, categorised formally

by folklorists as tale type ATU 301 (Cosquin 1887, Vol. 1, pp. 1-27; Espinosa 1946-1947, pp.

499-511; 1951; Fabre 1968). The tales themselves have never been the subject of serious

investigation by ethnographers and anthropologists, that is, in terms of the worldview implicit

in them. Instead, by the end of the 19th century folklorists were concentrating their efforts on

the task of classifying the narratives by motif and tale type (Cosquin 1887, Vol. 1, pp. 1-27;

Dundes 1997).

By 1910 Panzer had documented 221 European variants of ATU 301, the descent of

the Bear Son hero to the Under World (Panzer 1910). In a study published in 1959, 57

Hungarian versions of the tale are mentioned (Kiss 1959), and in 1992, Stitt, in his study

Beowulf and the Bear’s Son: Epic Saga, and Fairytale in Northern Germanic Tradition,

recorded 120 variants of the Bear’s Son story for Scandinavia alone (Stitt 1995, pp. 25-27, 209-

217). The cycle of oral tales is present in all the Indo-European language groups of Europe as

well as in Basque and in Finno-Ugric, for example Finnish, Saami and Magyar (Hungarian),

and even among the Mansi (Voguls).

Moreover, the most complete and least disturbed versions of these tales—ones

containing the most archaic structural elements and most consistent story-line—come from

former Basque-speaking zones of France and the Spain and from the Basque-speaking region

50

itself.1 In short, generally speaking, a cline from west to east can be detected in the tales with

the most archaic variants being found in western Europe, especially in the Pyrenean zone and

its immediate environs, the zone in which the belief in bear-ancestors survived into the 20th

century. Although the belief itself is absent, throughout Europe still today we encounter

abundant examples of the cultural practices and performance art that point to the previous

veneration of bears and bear-ancestors (Bertolotti 1994; Fréger 2012).

Indeed, there is a performance counterpart to the story of the birth, life, and exploits of

the Bear’s Son character, that has been passed down orally from one generation to the next.

More concretely, the fêtes de l’ours celebrated in the Pyrenean zone each year still incorporate

elements taken from the plot of the Bear’s Son narrative, reenacting, for instance, the initial

encounter between his mother and father and his subsequent birth in the bear cave (Bosch 2013;

Gual 2017). The Pyrenean zone where these bear fests continue to be performed extends from

the Basque-speaking zone in the west to the Mediterranean coast. The festivals continue to be

performed each year while their origins are currently under intense investigation. Moreover, in

the rest of Europe, in what were once remote mountain villages, similar although somewhat

less structurally complex performances have survived where the performers dress up as “bears”

(Fréger 2012), activities extensively documented today by hundreds of YouTube videos.

Consequently, the widespread distribution of the motif is best understood once we

recognise that we are dealing with relatively archaic materials emanating from this much earlier

European cosmology and the belief that humans descended from bears. While this theme is

represented in one of the most widely disseminated European folktales, until the belief that

humans descended from bears was plugged into the interpretive frame of these narratives and

related performances, they were not viewed as particularly significant.

4. Summary of the Bear’s Son tale

After several decades spent comparing and contrasting European as well as North American

examples of these tales, paying special attention to the versions collected in and around the

Basque-speaking region, eventually the contours of the story-line came into clear focus.. Some

1 Although analysis of the individual tales lies outside the scope of this paper, there are many written sources

(Arratibel 1980, pp. 65-74; Barandiarán 1973-1983, II, pp. 301-305; Barbier 1991 [1931], pp. 84-94, 129-132,

151-152, 157-158; Bidart 1978, pp. 80-83; 1979, pp. 130-137; Cerquand 1986 [1875-1882], pp. 78-85; Satrústegui

1975, pp. 18-21; Vinson 1883, pp. 80-92).

51

versions are much more archaic than others in terms of the implied worldview, completeness

of the story-line and the logic embedded in the sequence of episodes that make it up. As noted,

this has been the case of the folktales collected in the Pyrenean region. In the plot summary

that follows, the protagonist is referred to as Little Bear, given that in Basque the hero is called

Hartzkume (from hartz ‘bear’ and -kume ‘infant, child’) and Harzko (hartz ‘bear’ plus the

diminutive affix -ko).

The tale begins with a description of a young woman who goes out walking in the

woods, when suddenly she meets a bear. In some versions it is a very handsome bear and she

goes off with him to his cave, in others the bear, being more brutish, grabs her and carries her

off against her will. Sometime later, a child is born, half-bear, half-human. Years pass and one

day Little Bear decides he wants to go out to see the world. He manages to remove the rock

that his father places each day at the mouth of the cave when he goes out hunting. Little Bear

and his mother escape and at this point the adventures of Little Bear commence.

Early on, he has an encounter which allows him to acquire his Spirit Animal Helpers.

Walking along a path in the woods, he spies four animals ahead of him standing next to a dead

deer. They are a mountain lion, a dog, an eagle, and an ant. Mountain Lion calls out to him:

“We’re hungry and have been arguing about how to divide up the meat. Can you help us?.”2

Little Bear responds saying that he will try. “Mountain Lion, I’ll give you the haunch which is

what you like best.” And to Dog, he gives the ribs. Addressing Eagle, he says: “To you I’ll give

the innards and intestines because you don’t have any teeth, and this is what you like best.”

Finally, to the tiny Ant, Little Bear says, “To you I’ll give the skin and bones and when you’ve

eaten the marrow from the bones you can use them for your house when it rains.” With that,

Mountain Lion responds: “You’ve done so well with the division that we want to reward you.”

And each of them gives him an amulet, telling him that when he needs their help all he has to

do is touch it and call out their name. That way he will gain the animal’s innate abilities and

take on the shape of the animal in question. Mountain Lion gives him a tuff of fur, Dog another

tuff; the Eagle a feather, and little Ant a leg because she has several.

Time passes, and Little Bear finds himself at a farmstead where he meets the young

woman who lives there with her old father. Naturally, since all good stories need a romantic

twist, Little Bear falls in love and wants to run off with the young woman. But she explains

2 Unless indicated otherwise, the translations from Basque are the author’s, R.M.F.

52

that she cannot leave because she must care for her old father who happens to be immortal.

Little Bear insists that there must be a way to get the old man to die.

At this point the first example of shape-shifting takes place. The young woman tells

him to come back the next day to the garden where she will be combing the old man’s hair and

removing his lice. Little Bear is to climb up into the tree located next to them and hide in its

branches while she asks the old fellow what will make him die. So Little Bear shows up, shape-

shifted into an ant, and climbs silently up into the tree from where he overhears the old man’s

response: “For me to die, the challenger will have to do battle with my brother who is a shape-

shifter, too. He will appear as a porcupine and the challenger must show up as a mountain lion

and engage in battle with him. If he triumphs, a hare will appear, and the challenger must turn

into a dog and catch it.” The old man continues explaining: “Once the hare is caught, a pigeon

will fly up and my opponent must turn into an eagle, snatch the pigeon, open it and remove the

egg inside, take the egg and break it on the forehead of my brother who by then will appear as

a snake (or dragon).3 When that happens the egg inside my head will break and I will become

mortal and die.”

Naturally, Little Bear is able to follow these instructions successfully, shape-shifting

into one animal after another, while his opponent does the same. In the end the shape-shifted

snake (or dragon) is defeated, and Little Bear’s opponent is no longer immortal. From one point

of view, the identity the antagonist appears to be clear: he is the father of the young woman.

However, other versions of the tale point directly to his identification with the Herensuge, the

serpent or dragon who is killed by a blow to his forehead with a magical egg (Satrústegui 1975,

pp. 18-21).

3 In the Basque versions, the last act of shape-shifting brings into view the Herensuge, a name that has been

understood to refer to a “three-headed serpent.” But it is quite possible that is a modern interpretation that was

influenced by the wide-spread pan-European motif in a snake-like creature with three or more heads, for the

Basque expression can be understood in a very different manner. There are two components in the name: suge

‘snake’ is modified with heren ‘third.’ The term heren is also used to refer to a third-degree of relationship, e.g.,

herenamona, where amona is ‘grandmother’ (Euskaltzaindia 1987-2005). Hence, an herenamona is one’s ‘great-

great-grandmother,’ a ‘three-times removed grandmother.’ In the Basque versions of the tales, since all the helper

animals appear to be female, it might follow that earlier the use of heren to modify suge could have communicated

the notion of something like a ‘great-great-grandmother snake’ or ‘three-times removed serpent.’ If one were to

translate the expression ‘three-headed snake,’ the normal result would be hiru burudun sugea, most definitely not

heren-sugea. For example, herenegun, where the second element egun is ‘day,’ does not refer to ‘three days’ or

the ‘third day’ but rather means ‘three days ago.’

53

5. Interpretation of the meaning of the tale

At this juncture we can look at the meanings embedded in the tale when it is reinterpreted using

the framework provided by the animistic coding associated with the belief that humans descend

from bears. The protagonist is half-human, half-bear, born of the union of a human female and

a bear. Hence, he is an intermediary being, one that combines two natures. After leaving the

bear cave, he begins his adventures, going out into the world where he undertakes what might

be best described as a “vision quest,” a ritual similar to the ones still practiced today by Native

Americans, in which the seeker of the vision, after ritual purification, goes into the forest alone

to acquire one or more protector animals. And, having obtained objects pertaining to the helper

animal or animals in question, these Native Americans keep them in a special leather pouch

called a “medicine bundle” (Brown 1993, pp. x-xi; McWhorter 1940).

Little Bear’s encounter along with the talismans he receives gives him the ability to

shape-shift into the form of each animal when needed—a characteristic regularly associated

with the healer practitioners of circumpolar bear ceremonialism (Conway 1992; Feit 1994).

Anyone familiar with such healing practices would recognise the role played by these Spirit

Animal Helpers. The fact that this element consistently appears in the tales allows us to

reconstruct, always tentatively, the earlier cultural conceptualisations that made up the

cognitive frame of the storyteller and the members of the audience and, hence, the way that the

tales themselves were interpreted.

5.1 The Spirit Animal Helpers

A closer analysis of the plot reveals other cultural conceptualisations that informed the

interpretive framework for the tale, that is, an animistic ontology typical of hunter-gatherers

who lived (or live) in close contact with bears and other wild animals, along with the associated

belief in shape-shifting that is embedded in the narrative (Brightman 2002; Hallowell 1926).

On this view, the backdrop of the story becomes Nature itself, upon which the actions are

projected. A child, seeing an eagle swooping down to catch its prey, could have interpreted the

scene, symbolically, as an exteriorisation of a familiar episode from the traditional narrative.

When interpreted on this deeper level, what we find in the tale is a series of purely ritual

battles between two shape-shifters, one who is already half-bear, and his older adversary. From

54

this perspective, the role of the four Spirit Animal Helpers is of fundamental importance to the

hero, beginning with the smallest one, Ant. Moreover, there is a pattern to the ritual

confrontations: they are encounters between a predator and its prey (Table 3.1).

Table 3.1. The Predator-Prey pattern in the “Bear’s Son Tale”

Predator Prey

Mountain Lion Porcupine

Dog Hare

Eagle Pigeon

[Pigeon Egg] Snake

In the end, it is a magic egg that makes the old man become mortal like the rest of

Nature, subject to life and death, rather than standing apart as a transcendent immortal being.

The act of breaking the pigeon’s egg on the forehead of the Herensuge has an ethnographic

counterpart worth mentioning, namely, a remarkable custom that I was told about back in the

1980s. It survived in the Basque Country into the 1930s and 1940s and was performed by the

godmother on a young child who was just beginning to babble but had not yet started to speak.

A pigeon egg, referred to as an “Herensuge egg,” was broken on the child’s forehead. This was

thought to make the child “break out speaking” (Azkue 1989 [1935-1947], p. 101). Over time,

that ritual evolved into a tradition where the child was presented with a pastry by the godparent.

The pastry in question, referred to as a mona in Spanish, has an unpeeled hard-boiled egg sitting

on top, while the custom of breaking an egg on the forehead of another person to bring about

good luck, continues to be practiced on Easter Sunday in various parts of Spain and a hundred

years ago was still found in parts of Europe, such as Bavaria.

5.2 A different view of nature: against the “Law of the Jungle”

The equitable “division of the dead deer” can be read as a parable of sharing and reciprocity in

which Little Bear restores the natural order of things. It speaks of the harmony and balance of

Nature and the interlocking networks of dependencies that act to maintain that balance. Large

carnivores bring down the prey. Smaller carnivores then approach to eat the scraps. Next in

line come the scavenger birds, eagles, and vultures. And, finally, the insects arrive to pick clean

the skin and bones. Viewed from the perspective of modern conservation biology, the food web

55

described implicitly in the narrative suggests an understanding of the dynamics of “trophic

cascades” and the concept of “keystone species,” for example where the actions of large

carnivores impact the complex food-web dynamics in positive ways. At the same time, it

speaks of the cycle of life and death.

In summary, the ursine genealogy of the main character appears to be grounded in the

archaic belief that humans descend from bears. The plot unfolds on a landscape infused by

trophic relations, a metaphysics characterised by an awareness of the intricate reciprocal

relations inherent in Nature. The complex food-chain network of predator-prey interactions is

emphasised, rather than the triumph of “man over beast.” Animals are collaborators and

function as active participants. Overall the plot is framed by elements typical of an animistic

worldview, for example vision quests, medicine bundles, shape-shifting, while the plot

revolves around ritual combats between two shape-shifters, each aided by their respective

Animal Helpers (Frank 2016; Shepard, 1999, 2007).

5.3 An animistic worldview not so far away

The belief that humans and bears could mate and produce fertile offspring was accepted as

factual in much of Europe throughout the Middle Ages and beyond (Pastoureau 2011, pp. 68-

85). Indeed, it was not unusual to find folk heroes and even actual kings tracing their own

lineage back to such a bear-human mating (Glosecki 1989). Hence, until that belief faded from

view, the Bear’s Son tale was interpreted by audiences in a very different and far more realistic

fashion than it is today by modern readers.

Plus, rather than being long forgotten, the belief that humans and animals could shape-

shift—humans becoming animals or vice-versa—and that certain people were equipped with

their own animal helpers was widely accepted in Europe until quite recently. Indeed, it was a

key element in confessions made, often under duress, by members of the popular classes. More

tellingly, it constituted one of the main arguments brought forward by highly educated witch-

hunters, such as de Lancre (1612), well into the 17th century, to prove that someone was guilty

of engaging in witch-craft. In contrast, shape-shifting is a common and totally non-stigmatised

feature integral to the ritual performances of Native-American and Siberian healers.

56

6. Role of translation in generational transmissions of the tale

Oral literature is understood as the text and its performance including the interpreter and the

audience as well as the social context of the performance. Hence, the worldview and belief

system shared by the teller and those making up the audience play a role in how the traditional

tales are transmitted. Keeping in mind that initially the narratives were remembered and

reproduced from memory without recourse to any written back-up, the resilience of certain

themes and motifs is quite remarkable. At the same time, it is not surprising to see new elements

being introduced into the stories as they were passed on from one generation to the next.

At this juncture we can begin to consider two pathways typical of the processes of oral

transmission and translation that played out across time and space, one vertical and the other

horizontal or lateral in nature. The types of vertical transmission involved probably included

the following:

1) from one generation to the next in the same language—no translation only reproduction,

partial or total of the tale;

2) from one generation to the next in an increasingly bilingual setting, leading to partial or

total translation of the tale when rendering it into the second language;

3) retelling of the tale now fully translated into the second language by the new generation

of monolingual speakers with no knowledge of the first language of their elders but still

residing in the same geographical zone.

The types of horizontal transmission and translation which developed across time and

space can be characterised as follows:

1) from speakers of one language who, upon moving to a new location, would retell, that

is, translate, the narrative they had heard in their native language into what was for them a

non-native second language to an audience composed exclusively of speakers of the second

language;

2) next, speakers of this second language, who were now twice or more removed from the

original story, would pass their version(s) on to subsequent generations.

These processes of vertical and horizontal transmission and repeated translations from

one language to the next, as well as the adjustments made by the teller to accommodate changes

in the sociocultural norms and beliefs, caused the original story-line and associated details to

be modified, often with confusing results. For instance, one signal that the plot has been

57

modified is the introduction of bizarre actions and objects into the story. These modifications

are also easily detected when the intricate sequence of cause and effect found in the earlier

versions of the tale is compared with later versions, in which the role played by the Animal

Helpers is either eliminated entirely, that is, replaced by anthropomorphic male characters, or

the significance of the ritual battles between predator and prey is lost. Curiously, one of the

most resilient elements in the tales concerns the repeated attempts made to describe the formula

used to bring about the death of the antagonist, resulting in variants of the tale where a sequence

of animals is mentioned, although the animals often are no longer viewed as helpers, nor are

they always the same animals.

Clearly, in addition to inevitable occasional failures of memory on the part of the tellers

of the tales, another major cause for the changes that can be detected in them seems to be the

fact that, when viewed in the longue durée, language change—replacement—was also going

on in various parts of Europe. A bilingual generation of story-tellers would develop who would

keep a few elements in the original language which the speaker and bilingual audience still

understood. However, when the storyteller was a member of the next generation of

monolingual speakers, these elements might be retained, but their meaning would no longer be

comprehended. Rather, they could end up integrated into the story-line as exotic entities. In

short, these processes of vertical and horizontal transmission often required the teller to

translate the tale from one language into another, which also contributed to incomplete

knowledge transfer between generations with respect to the story elements themselves.

In addition to these types of vertical and horizontal transmission and the acts of

translation that they implied, there was yet another modification that came about when the tales

passed from orality and gained support in the written word. With the exception of a few

collections dating from the 17th and 18th centuries, for the most part this transition took place

during the latter half of the 19th century and first decades of the 20th century, when collecting

the folktales of each region and committing them to written form became a major pastime of

folklorists, driven in part by the Romanticism of the epoch and the belief that the tales were

central to the identity of each region. And that process, once again, often involved recording,

as best was possible at the time, the words, frequently of unlettered informants speaking in

local dialects, which were difficult to capture in print (Halbert and Widdowson 2015 [1996]).

That process, in and of itself, did not guarantee that the written version of the tale would

replicate the orally recorded form for it was not unusual for the tale to undergo modification

58

and elaboration, embellishments of a literary nature that the collector of the tale felt was

appropriate, as well as the suppression of elements that were distasteful to the collector. Finally,

there was the feedback that occurred when literary versions of the tales, often themselves

transcribed and/or translated from another language, were read before unlettered audiences.

Years later the same narratives were retold to collectors of folktales who assumed a totally oral

transmission of the tales (de Blécourt 2012, pp. 158-170; Zipes 2012, pp. 175-190). The next

step consisted of producing translations of the most well-known collections of classic tales, for

example, the Brothers Grimm, Perrault, and Hans Christian Andersen, into the major languages

of Europe. That process let to the proliferation of selected literary variants of the tales while

versions found in minority languages never got translated.

As has been demonstrated, by paying close attention to changes taking place in the

stories, it is possible to identify in them evidence concerning the nature of the transmissions

that took place in times past, as the cultural conceptualisations that shaped the interpretative

frame fell away and modern interpolations were added. Hence, the ways in which the tales

themselves were reshaped are a result of several factors, memory lapses, mistranslations, as

well as efforts on the part of storytellers to adjust the content of the tales to achieve a better fit

with the ongoing changes in sociocultural norms and beliefs of their audiences.

7. Factors leading to changes in the text and the fragmentation of the narrative structure

Over time, the cultural conceptualisations supporting the earlier animistic cosmovision and

ursine genealogy were replaced by new ones. This contributed to the loss of awareness on the

part of subsequent generations of tellers and translators of the tale concerning the deeper

meaning of the four Spirit Animal Helpers and the shape-shifting that takes place. In the Middle

Ages, Christianity contributes to this erosion, bringing about a strict dichotomy, a conceptual

divide which sets humans totally apart from animals. And, as this portrayal of animal otherness

becomes increasingly entrenched in the worldview utilised by both the tellers of the tale and

their audiences, it becomes harder to understand the earlier interpretive framework. Moreover,

in the eyes of the Church, the European bear cult was perceived as a threat and impediment to

conversion of the popular classes.

For example, as Pastoureau notes, the Germanic veneration for the bear shows that the

animal was a being apart, an intermediary creature between the animal and human worlds and

59

considered even an ancestor or relative of humans (Pastoureau 2011, p. 2). During the Middle

Ages, worship of the bear, however, was not confined to the Germanic world for it was also

deeply engrained among the Slavs, who admired the bear as much as the Germans did. Then

there is the fact that both Germanic and Slavic languages use noa terms—euphemisms—to

refer to the animal, which recalls the wide-spread pattern of semantic avoidance documented

among the indigenous peoples of North America and Eurasia (Black 1998; Nagy 2017;

Pastoureau 2011, pp. 46-52; Sokolova 2000).

More concretely, where bear ceremonialism is practiced, such patterns of semantic

avoidance go hand in hand with the belief that the bear is omniscient and, therefore, has the

power to hear all that is said about him. Addressing the bear with its real name is considered

dangerous, so hunters avoid mentioning the bear’s true name, choosing rather to speak about

him using euphemisms. In times past, the common term utilised by speakers of Slavic

languages was medved ‘honey-eater,’ which today is the word used to refer generically to a

“bear,” while Germanic tribes preferred to call him the ‘brown one,’ an expression that gave

rise eventually to the English word bear, linked etymologically to the English words brown

and bruin. Consequently, the Slavic and Germanic words for ‘bear’ can be considered semantic

residue left over from this older ursine belief system.

Indeed, we can say that throughout much of Europe “in the Carolinian period, the bear

continued to be seen as a divine figure, an ancestral god whose worship took on various forms

but remained solidly rooted, impeding the conversion of pagan peoples” (Pastoureau 2011, p.

3). Almost everywhere, from the Pyrenees to the Baltic, “the bear stood as a rival to Christ.

The Church thought it appropriate to declare war on the bear, to fight him by all means

possible” (Pastoureau 2011, p. 3).

In summary, whereas the struggle of the medieval church against the bear was

ultimately successful, that is, in terms of eliminating most traces of the ancient ursine cults,

what it was not able to do was to stop storytellers from passing on the tenets of the ursine belief

system itself in the covert form of traditional narratives. These stories insured that the hero’s

life and times would be transmitted orally, under the radar, across generations. With the passage

of time, the narratives would be translated from one language to another, a process that would

introduce modifications and significant fragmentation of the narrative structure along with an

increasing loss of awareness of the underlying animistic cosmovision.

60

7.1 The role of tale types in the breakdown of the narrative structure

Over the past century, one of the primary concerns of researchers in folkloristics has been the

creation of tale types that permit the classification of the stories and, in theory, allow for cross-

cultural comparisons. For instance, in tales of “The Bear’s Son,” the hero is often portrayed as

descending to the underworld to rescue up to three princesses, a plot line that has elicited many

different scholarly labels (Cosquin 1887, Vol. 1, pp. 1-27). The most well-known is that of

Aarne and Thompson (1961, pp. 90-93), who refer to the story as “The Three Stolen

Princesses” (ATU 301)4 with the following variants: “Quest for a Vanished Princess” (ATU

301A); “The Strong Man and His Companions Journey to the Land of Gold” (ATU 301B);

“The Magic Objects” (ATU 301C) and “The Dragons Ravish Princesses" (ATU 301D).5

Hansen (1957, pp. 24-25, 75-77) classified the tale similarly, with some modifications, but he

saw that ATU 301 combined often with “Strong John” (ATU 650) (“Der Starke Hans”), a

version of which appears in Grimm.

Yet no particular significance has been attributed by folklorists to the fact that the hero

is often portrayed as having a human mother and an ursine father, even when the hero is

described as being very hairy or having bear ears. At times, he is described as a human from

the waist up and a bear from the waist down. In the case of ATU 650 “Strong John,” his ursine

paternity is not mentioned. The hero is merely described as extraordinarily strong without any

explanation being given, for example having the strength of fourteen men or eating as much as

fourteen men, but without any reason for why this is so. In the Basque language variants of the

tale classed collectively as ATU 650, the main character is called Hamalau, a term that

translates literally as the number “Fourteen” (Frank 2008b). Hence, finding tales in Romance

languages, for example Spanish, Catalan and Italian versions of ATU 650, in which the hero is

called “Fourteen,” would suggest that the ultimate source of those tales was probably the

Basque-language version itself and that at some point a form of bilingualism played a role in

the transmission of the tales.6

4 In 2004 an updated version of the Aarne-Thompson (1961) tale type index was published by Uther (2004).

Although in the present chapter, tale types will be referenced as ATU (Aarne-Thompson-Uther), I would note that

use of tale type indexes and the most recent iteration of them have been a called into question (Dundes 1997;

Jason, 2006). 5 A remarkably in-depth discussion of the tale and its diffusion is found in the Wikipedia entry for “Jean de

l’Ours”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_de_l%27Ours (accessed 28 Jan, 2019). 6 Joan Armangué, email message to the author, 08.20.2009.

61

We need to remember that the label frequently used by folklorists, that is, “The Bear’s

Son,” is a broad one.7 It encompasses not only ATU 301 and its variants but also, as mentioned,

this tale type has been linked to ATU 650. A key element in the plot-line of ATU 301 is the

fact that the protagonist acquires two or more unusually strong and fully anthropomorphic

companions who help him. What has not been recognised, however, is that the fully

anthropomorphic helpers replaced the Spirit Animal Helpers that are found in older variants.

Instead, the Spirit Animal Helpers end up being relegated to a totally separate and supposedly

unrelated tale type, ATU 554, called “The Grateful Animals.”8 And, to complicate matters even

more, as will be demonstrated, the Spirit Animal Helpers resurface in the tale type referred to

as “The Ogre’s (Devil’s) Heart in the Egg” (ATU 302).

To summarise, over time the plot of the tale broke into pieces, each of which realigned

itself in different ways to reflect the changing cultural conceptualisations of Europeans. Hence,

we can see that narratives associated with the expression “The Bear’s Son” include ATU 301,

plus ATU 301a, b, c, and d, variants referred to globally by folklorists as “The Three

Princesses.” At the same time there are other tale types that form part of the same narrative

tradition: ATU 650 “Strong John,” ATU 554 “The Grateful Animals,” and ATU 302, now

shortened to “Soul in an Egg.” In sum, over time the story-line and episodes associated with

earlier version of the tale ended up breaking apart and, as a result, became classified as different

tale types (ATU 650, ATU 554, ATU 302, and ATU 301, plus at least four subtypes of ATU

301).9

7.2 The disappearance of the Animal Helpers

7 ATU 301, referred to globally as “The Bear’s Son,” refers to tales with a remarkably similar narrative structure

that have been recorded in many different languages. Although in actual practice the tales show up with different

titles, the name of the main character has tended to be stable, no matter the language in which the tale was

collected: Juan el Osito in Spanish, Jan de l’Os (Catalan), Jan l’Ourset (Gascon), Jean de l'Ours in French,

Giovanni l'Orso in Italian, Hans Bär in German, and Ivanuska as well as Ivanko Medvedko in Slavic languages.

In contrast to this generic naming process found in all these languages, as has been noted, in Basque the hero is

simply called Hartzkume and Harzko. Even though the reasons for this discrepancy are fascinating, they lie outside

the scope of this study. 8 Little attention has been paid to this tale type or the fact that episodes making up the story-line of ATU 302 and

ATU 554 overlap in remarkable ways. One of the few studies is found in Vinson’s collection of Basque folktales,

where he talks about a tale called “Les Dons des Trois Animaux” (Vinson 1883, I, pp. 166-177, II, pp. 129-131). 9 Examples of tales where there is a melding of motifs from ATU 301, ATU 302, ATU 650 and ATU 554include

two versions of a story called “La princesa encantada” (Espinosa 1946-1947, pp. 294-299); “La serpiente de siete

cabezas”; and two versions of “El cuerpo sin alma” collected by Wheeler (1943, pp. 317-339).

62

In the tale of “The Bear’s Son” (ATU 301), the Animal Helpers disappear entirely from view,

replaced by figures more in consonance with the later worldview. Instead of animal helpers,

the hero acquires two or three anthropomorphic companions, huge male figures endowed with

immense strength. Although the main protagonist is still portrayed as half-bear and half-human,

born of a human female and a bear, his helper companions are no longer animals as is the case

in the earlier versions. For example, Blécourt (2012, pp. 179-181) discusses a literary tale

dating from 1634 in which the animals morph into helping brothers-in-law or brothers, a tale

type classed as ATU 552.

With the passage of time a kind of bifurcation takes place giving rise to two variants.

On the one hand, we have the set of stories that continue to retain the animal helpers (ATU 302

and ATU 554) and, to a certain extent, imprints from the animistic coding of the earlier story-

line. But in these tales, the ursine identity of the hero is gone. On the other hand, there is the

set of stories (ATU 301), known as the tales of “The Bear’s Son,” in which the ursine ancestry

of the main character is retained, but the animal helpers are translated into human companions.

In summary, the encounter of the hero with the four animal helpers often survives,

together with some iteration of the magic formula. However, these elements constitute a

separate tale type. In the process, the key structural importance of the animal helpers to the

development of the overall plot is lost. In other instances, episodes from the plot detach

themselves entirely and wander off, becoming viewed as stand-alone stories in which the magic

formula is only a peripheral element. In these instances, the ursine identity of the main character

also disappears. Not uncommonly, even when animals are mentioned, the now fully human

hero is elevated even further, as elements from a hierarchical society are introduced into the

frame, reconfiguring the main character as a prince who rescues a princess. And, because of

his success, based on carrying out individual actions on his own, he is rewarded and able to

marry the daughter of the king.

At times, in these stand-alone tales the antagonist from the original narrative survives

and can be easily recognised, transformed into a kind of ogre portrayed as the “immortal

enemy.” For instance, he shows up in Slavic folktales as Kościej nieśmiertelny (Polish) or

Коще́й Бессме́ртный (Russian). This stand-alone story, classified by the tale type “The

Ogre’s (Devil’s) Heart in the Egg” (ATU 302), will serve as an example of the way that the

older narrative and story-line become modified over time.

63

7.3 An example of fragmentation: “Koshchei the Immortal”

A well-known Russian version of the story speaks of how a warlock called Koshchei the

Immortal carries off a princess and keeps her prisoner in his golden castle. A prince named

Ivan encounters her one day as she is walking alone and disconsolate in the castle garden, and

cheered by the prospect of escaping with him she goes to the warlock and coaxes him with

false and flattering words, saying, “My dearest friend, tell me, I pray you, will you never die?.”

“Certainly not,” says he. “Well,” says she, “and where is your death?.” In this case his “death”

is portrayed as a concrete object that must be located, albeit with great difficulty, and not as

the result of a sequence of successful ritual battles.

Eventually Koshchei tells her the following:

My death is far from here and hard to find, on the wide ocean: in that sea is the island of Bujan,

and upon this island there grows a green oak, and beneath this oak is an iron chest, and in this

chest is a small basket, and in this basket is a hare, and in this hare is a duck, and in this duck

is an egg; and he who finds the egg and breaks it, at that same instant causes my death. (Dietrich

1857, p. 23)

The prince procures the fateful egg and with it in his hands he confronts the immortal giant. In

one of the descriptions of Koshchei’s death, he is said to be killed by a blow to his forehead,

inflicted by the mysterious egg (Curtin 1891, pp. 119-122; Dietrich 1857, pp. 21-24; Ralston

1873, pp. 100-105, 109).

Over time Koshchei turned into a legendary figure in Slavic countries and remains very

popular even today, albeit in new incarnations. He has been used in various games, movies,

and theatrical productions. For example, The Witcher is an action role-playing hack and slash

video game, developed by CD Projekt RED and published by Atari. It is based on a book series

of the same name by the Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski, who must have been familiar with

the Slavic versions of the folktale and its frightful antagonist. The vitality of this character as a

source of creative reconstructions in Slavic culture is truly remarkable. In addition to inspiring

producers of video games and novels, Koshchei was utilised earlier by Slavic composers,

appearing as the villain in Igor Stravinsky’s ballet Firebird, while Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

wrote an opera involving him, titled Кащей бессмертный, or Kashchey the Immortal.10

10 For further discussions of the origins and diffusion of this character cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koschei

(accessed on Jan 28, 2019).

64

When we compare the older version with the Slavic example, significant changes in

the story line and cast of characters can be detected (Table 3.2).

Table 3.2. Earlier animistic version vs. Slavic version of “Koshchei the Immortal”

Earlier Animistic Version Slavic Version

Hero Half-bear, half-human (Bear’s

Son)

Prince Ivan

Female Young woman who cannot leave

her old father

Princess who is held captive

Antagonist Old man who is immortal Giant who is immortal

Powers attributed to main

characters

Shamanic – shape-shifting Physical strength & prowess

Cast of characters Commoners Royalty

Role of predator animals Active – spirit helpers – shape-

shifters

Absent

Role of prey animals Active – shape-shifters playing

the role of the Old Man’s Brother

Passive – physically dissected

by the hero to obtain the egg

Mortality caused by blow to the

forehead

Egg Egg

As mentioned, another example of the fragmentation of the story is the fact that this

episode has been extracted and used as a separate classificatory tale type: “The Ogre’s (Devil’s)

Heart in the Egg” (ATU 302). Frazer utilised an even broader classification in order to illustrate

the wide-spread nature of this motif which he described as “The External Soul in Folk-tales.”

Indeed, he dedicated an entire chapter to exploring its manifestations in European folktales.

The majority of the narratives treated fall under ATU 302 and include encounters with the

Animal Helpers and references to variations, often quite strange in nature, of the formula that

needs to be carried out to bring about the death of a monster, evil fairy, warlock or dragon, a

formula that frequently requires breaking a magic egg on the forehead of the enemy (Frazer

1913, pp. 95-141). However, in the tales discussed by Frazer, the ursine identity of the hero is

not mentioned even once.

8. Conclusions: viewed in the longue durée

When viewed in the longue durée, we can see that the tale has been retold and retranslated

thousands of times, given that variants show up in languages spoken across much of Europe.

Features integral to the master narrative and hence the story-line itself can be viewed as proxies

65

for estimating the chronological horizon that should be assigned to the interpretative

framework accessed by storytellers and their audiences, that is, the worldview entrenched in

the story. Our analysis reveals an animistic cosmology typical of bear ceremonialism, grounded

in the belief that humans descended from bears and, conversely, that bears are relatives of

humans (Figure 3.1).

Figure 3.1. The “Bear Son’s Tale” in the longue durée

A close reading of the narrative plot and the logic implicit to the story-line allows us to

gain insights into contextual factors and knowledge structures that were once functioning in

the background and that allowed storytellers and their audiences to make sense of the events

narrated. Whereas it is impossible to know the time-depth that should be assigned to the story-

line itself, the ursine genealogy takes us back to a pre-agro-pastoral mentality and to an

audience familiar with an animistic ontology typical of hunter-gatherers (Frank 2018). Even

though the age of the tale itself cannot be dated with precision, the fact that the most

undisturbed variants of it have been collected in the Pyrenees and areas nearby, raises a

question concerning the current assumption that these tales should be assigned an Indo-

European origin, as many have alleged (da Silva and Tehrani 2016; Frazer 1913, pp. 133-134;

Grimm and Grimm, 1884, pp. 580-581), or whether, instead, they have a pre-Indo-European

origin and represent stories that later came to be translated and integrated into the storytelling

repertoire of Indo-European languages.

Narrative Externalized in Performance Art

Story of Life & Times of the Hero as

Shaman Apprentice

Belief in Bear Ancestors

•Multiple examples of bear fests performed in villages across Europe

•Performers dressed as bear-humans and quite possibly as the Bear's Son himself

•His role as an Intermediary between humans and bears

•A vision quest and acquisition of his Spirit Animal Helpers

• Shape-shifting and shamanism

•Non-anthropocentric animistic view of Nature

66

We can appreciate that until the 19th and 20th centuries, when the majority of these tales

were first collected and recorded in written form, we are talking about primarily face-to-face

oral transmissions, interactions that separate us from those hunter-gatherers who first came up

with the story. Perhaps even more surprising is the fact that in this process, involving multiple

levels of translation and reinterpretation, enough of the elements embedded in the archaic

worldview have survived, both in the tales themselves and in the associated performance art

and folk belief of Europeans, that we can still perceive the outlines of the original narrative.

Moreover, their survival raises a raft of questions concerning the role of these oral

traditions and the reasons that they survived. Were they once viewed by storytellers, the

knowledge keepers of the past, as a vehicle for maintaining and transmitting key elements of

this worldview from one generation to the next? Less expected perhaps, is the emergence of

the clear possibility of finding in these folkloric traditions, reflexes of an older pre-Indo-

European culture. Clearly in the intervening millennia separating us from our hunter-gatherer

ancestors, Europe has undergone major socio-cultural and economic transformations, both

ideological and demographic, all of which have acted to undermine this earlier hunter-gatherer

ideology and the animistic worldview that supported it. Nevertheless, the primacy of the figure

of the bear and the ursine pattern of descent intrinsic to the pan-European Bear’s Son tales is

still visible beneath the accumulated layers of translation and transformation.

References

Aarne, Antti and Stith Thompson. 1961. The Types of the Folktale: A Classification and

Bibliography. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica.

Arratibel, José. 1980. Kontu zaarrak. Bilbao: Editorial La Gran Enciclopedia Vasca.

Azkue, Resurrección María. 1989 [1935-1947]. Euskalerriaren Yakintza: Literatura popular

del País Vasco. I. Costumbres y Supersticiones. Madrid: Euskaltzaindia & Espasacalpe.

Barbier, Jean. 1991 [1931]. Legendes Basques. Donostia / Baiona: Elkar.

Barandiarán, José M. 1973-1983. Obras completas. Bilbao: La Gran Enciclopedia Vasca.

Bertolotti, Maurizio. 1994. La fiaba del figlio dell’orso e le culture siberiane dell’orso.

Quaderni di Semantica 15(1): 39-56.

Bidart, Pierre. 1978. Récits & Contes Populaires du Pays Basque 1. Recuellis par Pierre-Bidart

en Basse-Navarre. Paris: Gallimard.

67

Bidart, Pierre. 1979. Récits & Contes Populaires du Pays Basque 2. Recuillis par Pierre Bidart

dans le Labourd. Paris: Gallimard.

Black, Lydia T. 1998. Bear in imagination and in ritual. Ursus 10: 323-347.

Bosch, Robert. 2013. Fêtes de l'ours en Vallespir. Perpignan: Trabucaire.

Brightman, Robert A. 2002. Grateful Prey: Rock Cree Human-Animal Relationships. Regina,

Saskatchewan: Canadian Plains research Center, University of Regina.

Brown, Joseph E. 1993. Animals of the Soul: Sacred Animals of the Oglala Sioux. Rockport,

Mass.: Element.

Cerquand, Jean F. 1986 [1875-1882]. Ipar Euskal Herriko Legenda eta Ipuinak. Basajauna,

Laminak, Tartaroa. Anuntxi Aranaran Transkripzioa. San Sebastián: Editorial Txertoa.

Conway, Thor. 1992. The conjurer’s lodge: Celestial narratives from Algonkian shamans. In

Earth & Sky: Visions of the Cosmos in Native American Folklore, ed. Ray A.

Williamson and Claire R. Farrer. 236-259. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico

Press.

Corvino, Claudio. 2013. Orso: Biografia di un animale: Della prehistoria allo sciamanesimo.

Bologna, Italy: Odoya.

Cosquin, Emmanuel. 1887. Les Contes populaires de Lorraine comparés avec les contes des

autres provinces de France et des pays étrangers. Paris: F. Vieweg, Libraire-Editeur.

Curtin, Jeremiah. 1891. Myths and Folk-tales of the Russians, Western Slavs and Magyars.

London: Little Brown & Company.

da Silva, Sara Graça and Jamshid J. Tehrani. 2016. Comparative phylogenetic analyses uncover

the ancient roots of Indo-European folktales. Royal Society Open Science 3: 150645.

https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.150645

de Blécourt, Willem. 2012. Tales of Magic, Tales in Print: On the Genealogy of Fairy Tales

and the Brothers Grimm. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

de Lancre, Pierre. 1612. Tableau de l'Inconstance des mauvais Anges et Demons où il est

amplement traicté des Sorciers & de la Sorcellerie. Paris: Jean Berjon.

Dietrich, Anton. 1857. Russian Popular Tales. Trans. from the German version of Anton

Dietrich, with an Introduction by Jacob Grimm. London: Chapman and Hall.

Dundes, Alan. 1997. The Motif-Index and the Tale Type Index: A critique. Journal of Folklore

Research 24(3): 195-202.

68

Espinosa, Aurelio M. 1946-1947. Cuentos populares españoles, recogidos de la tradición oral

de España. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. Instituto “Antonio

de Nebrija” de Filología.

Espinosa, Aurelio M. 1951. Spanish and Spanish-American folk tales. Journal of American

Folklore 64(252): 151-162.

Euskaltzaindia. 1987-2005. Orotariko Euskal Hiztegia (OEH) = Diccionario general vasco.

Bilbao: Euskaltzaindia; Desclée de Brouwer. http://tinyurl.com/euskaltzaindia

(Accessed on Jan 28, 2019)

Fabre, Daniel. 1968. Jean de l'Ours: Analyse formelle et thématique d'un Conte populaire.

Carcassonne: Éditiones de la Revue ‘Folklore’.

Feit, Harvey. 1994. Dreaming of animals: The Waswanipi Cree shaking tent ceremony in

relation to environment, hunting and missionisation. In Circumpolar Religion and

Ecology: An Anthropology of the North, ed. Takao Yamada and Takashi Irimoto. 289-

316. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press.

Frank, Roslyn M. 2008a. Evidence in favor of the Palaeolithic Continuity Refugium Theory

(PCRT): Hamalau and its linguistic and cultural relatives. Part 1. Insula: Quaderno di

Cultura Sarda 4: 91-131.

Frank, Roslyn M. 2008b. Recovering European ritual bear hunts: A comparative study of

Basque and Sardinian ursine carnival performances. Insula: Quaderno di Cultura Sarda

3: 41-97.

Frank, Roslyn M. 2016. Paul Shepardss "Bear Essay": On environmental ethnics, deep ecology

and our need for the other-than-human animals. Creative Commons License.

http://www.tinyurl.com/paul-shepard-bear-essay (acessed Jan 26, 2019)

Frank, Roslyn M. 2018. Looking at Europe through a Basque lens: Ethnolinguistics

considerations of two worldviews. Etnolingwistyka 30: 189-213. DOI:

110.17951/et.12018.17930.17189

Frazer, James G., Sir. 1913. The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. Vol 11. New

York: The Macmillan Company. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/43433/43433-

h/43433-h.html#noteref_370 (Accessed on Jan 26, 2019)

Fréger, Charles. 2012. Wilder Mann: The Image of the Savage. Stockport, England: Dewi

Lewis Publishing.

69

Glosecki, Stephen O. 1989. Shamanism and Old English Poetry. New York and London:

Garland Publishing, Inc.

Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. 1884. Grimm’s Household Tales: With the Authors’ Notes.

Vol II. Trans. Margaret Hunt. London: George Bell and Sons.

Gual, Oriol Lluis. 2017. Les derniers ours: Une histoire des fêtes de l'ours. Quaderns del

Costumari de Catalunya Nord.

Halbert, Herbert and John D. A. Widdowson. 2015. Folktales of Newfoundland (RLE

Folklore): The Resilience of the Oral Tradition. London: Routledge.

Hallowell, Alfred Irving. 1926. Bear ceremonialism in the Northern hemisphere. American

Anthropologist 28: 1-175.

Hansen, Terence L. 1957. The Types of the Folktale in Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican

Republic and Spanish America. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California

Press.

Jason, Heda. 2006. Review of The Types of International Folktales: A Classification and

Bibliography. Fabula 47(1/2): 172-186.

Kiss, Gabriela. 1959. A 301-es mesetípus magyar redakciói. Ethnographia (Budapest) LXX:

253-268.

Lajoux, Jean-Dominique. 1996. L'homme et l'ours. Grenoble: Glénat.

McWhorter, Lucullus V. 1940. Yellow Wolf: His Own Story. Caldwell, ID: Caxton Printers,

Ltd.

Nagy, Zoltan. 2017. Everybody’s a bit scared of the bear: Fear of the bear along the Vasyugan

river in Siberia. In Sous la peau de l'ours. L'humanité et les ursides: Approche

interdisciplinaire, ed. Karen Hoffmann-Schickel, Pierre Le Roux, and Éric Navet. 453-

491. Paris: Éditions Connaissances et Savoirs. https://tinyurl.com/fear-of-the-bear

(Accessed on Jan 5, 2019)

Panzer, Friedrich. 1910. Studien zur germanischen Sagengeschichte. I. Beowulf. München: C.

H. Beck.

Pastoureau, Michel. 2011. The Bear: A History of a Fallen King. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

Peillen, Txomin. 1986. Le culte de l'ours chez les anciens basques. In L'ours brun: Pyrénées,

Agruzzes, Mts. Cantabriques, Alpes du Trentin, ed. Claude Dendaletche. 171-173. Pau:

Acta Biologica Montana.

Field Code Changed

Formatted: English (United States)

Formatted: English (United States)

70

Ralston, William R. S. 1873. Russian Folk-Tales. London: Smith, Elder and Company.

Satrústegui, José M. 1975. La leyenda del dragón en las tradiciones de Urdain. Cuadernos de

Etnografía y Etnografía de Navarra 19: 13-30.

Shepard, Paul. 1999. The significance of bears. In Encounters with Nature: Essays by Paul

Shepard, ed. Florence R. Shepard. 92-97. Washington, DC/Covelo, California: Island

Press/Shearwater Books.

Shepard, Paul. 2007. The biological bases of bear mythology and ceremonialism. The

Trumpeter: Journal of Ecosophy 23(2): 74-79.

Sokolova, Zoya P. 2000. The bear cult. Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia

2(2): 121-130.

Stitt, J. Michael. 1995. Beowulf and the Bear’s Son: Epic, Saga and Fairytale in Northern

Germanic Tradition. New York/London: Garland Publishing, Inc.

Truffaut, Thierry. 2010. Contribution à la connaissance de la permanence ursine dans les

diverses manifestations culturelles, culturelles et festives dans le périmètre de

l'ancienne province romain de Novempopulanie. Munibe 61: 407-434.

www.aranzadi.eus/fileadmin/docs/Munibe/2010407434AA.pdf (Accessed on Jan 6,

2019)

Uther, Hans-Jörg. 2004. The Types of International Folktales: A Classification and

Bibliography. Helsinki: Folklore Fellows Communication 284-286. Academia

Scientiarum Fennica.

Vinson, Julien. 1883. Le Folk-lore du Pays Basque. Paris: Maisonneuve.

Wheeler, Howard T. 1943. Tales from Jalisco Mexico. Philadelphia: American Folk-Lore

Society.

Zipes, Jack. 2012. The Irresistible Fairy Tale: The Cultural and Social History of the Genre.

Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.