Once upon a time in the Basque region everything was completely different from what it is now. Where the mountain peaks rise today in the Pyrenees, there were green meadows, and where deep chasms cut the mountains, calm rivers flowed. And the animals spoke then, and people understood their language. And people, animals and trees would have lived in peace in the Pyrenees if a huge Snake had not settled in the mountains. Her body twisted between the mountain slopes, and her tail swept the ground at the very foot of the Pyrenees Mountains, on the banks of the French Garonne River.
The snake slept all year, and when it woke up, it stuck out its terrible forked tongue and licked entire villages with it. There was no salvation from this Snake, neither people, nor animals, nor trees, nor flowers! Even the stones groaned in fear! The Ayudis in the Basque lands have forgotten how to enjoy the sun, play with children and cultivate the fields.
- For what? - they asked. “Does it really matter what ends up in the belly of this insatiable creature?” If there are stones and dry earth, that’s even better. Maybe then the Snake will die.
But the Snake lived and lived, and the flowering valleys, mountain slopes and fields turned into desert. And people began to leave these terrible places...
And then one summer, when the Snake woke up and dined on twenty villages, four forests with all their inhabitants and all the fish from one mountain river, and then fell asleep again, resting his head on the highest mountain in the Pyrenees - the Midday Peak, all the Basque men from the French Garonne River to the Spanish Aragon River gathered for a council. For many hours they decided what to do, how to kill the insatiable Snake, how to save their mountains and land, but they could not come up with anything.
Then one old man stood up and said:
— The snake will now wake up in the fall. But we must cope with it before the last summer month goes beyond the mountains. Let's cut down the forest on one slope of Midday Peak, cut it into firewood and build a huge fire.
- For what? - asked then the Basque men who had gathered for a council from the French Garonne River to the Spanish Aragon River.
“You didn’t listen to me,” answered the old man. - We will build a huge fire and wake up the Snake. And when she wakes up and opens her eyes, she will see a fire on the slope of the Midday Peak. She will be very angry and out of anger will not understand that the fire is her death. She will stick out her forked tongue, swallow the fire and die.
“It’s a clever idea,” decided the Basque men who had gathered for the council. They went home, took axes, and when they returned to the slope of Midday Peak, they cut down the entire forest there, chopped it into firewood and lit a fire. Such a flame flared up here that all the inhabitants of the Pyrenees mountains saw it. They realized that the end of their misfortunes had come, and they were very happy. And if they were happy, they made noise, played bagpipes and drums, and started dancing. The noise rose to the sky, and from all this noise the Snake woke up. She became so furious that she swept away three villages with her tail. She opened her mouth and looked for those who dared to disturb her. But the Snake didn’t see anyone. Then she bent her head to the ground and saw red flames from a huge fire. And since all snakes see poorly, and she had not yet woken up properly, she did not understand what it was.
The snake licked the fire and screamed. Until then, no one had heard snakes scream! From her scream, the mountains trembled, the waterfalls in the mountains stopped, and the rivers flowed backwards.
In pain, the Snake began to rush along the slopes of the Pyrenees, and where the mountains had just risen, valleys lay, and where there were fields, the earth rose.
The Snake screamed, the earth groaned, and people fled under a hail of stones. To extinguish the fire that was burning her from the inside, the Snake drank all the water from the mountain rivers.
But then for the last time her head twitched, the Snake died, and fear left the Pyrenees. And then all the water that she drank from the mountain rivers flowed out of her mouth and became a lake, a mountain lake called Izabit.
And from then on this Snake also began to be called the Snake of Lake Izabit...
The Snake is gone. But her memory remained forever in the Basque country. Ask
anyone: how was the valley in which his house stands born, or why did the mountain grow behind the village?
“It was the Snake who did everything,” the Basque will answer. “The Snake was huge, but we defeated it, because when all the people gather together, they are not afraid of any snakes.”
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru