“The Bear’s Son Tale”: Traces of an ursine genealogy and bear ceremonialism in a pan-European oral tradition By Roslyn M. Frank Keywords: Bear ceremonialism, animism, relational ontology, Basque, Ursus arctos Abstract: The most widely disseminated set of European folktales is the “Bear’s Son Tale” (ATU 301), also known as “John the Bear”, whose main character is the offspring of a bear and a human female. The possible implications of the ursine genealogy central to the structure of these stories is explored, starting with a discussion of the way the tales have been treated by folklorists up until now, including how they have been classified in ways that leave aside the ethnographic evidence for real world manifestations of the ursine genealogy. In contrast, I have attempted to identify the intangible remains of this animist ontology and how it is embedded in well-documented beliefs, traditions, rituals and performance art across much of Europe and most particularly in the Pyrenean region. Central to the endeavor has been the work I have carried out for many years on the Basque culture and language which allowed me to discover that the Basques used to believe humans descended from bears, a belief in consonance with the tenets of circumboreal bear ceremonialism. Two aspects of this widely disseminated set of European folktales will be highlighted. The first is how the folktales have acted to transmit the belief in an ursine ancestry across time, while the second is the way the animist relational ontology embedded in the tales can provide a means of accessing the extra-textual imprint of the belief system in the real world. Introduction For the past forty years I have explored the ramifications of an archaic belief that I encountered while doing fieldwork among the Basque people back in the early 1980s, namely, that Basques used to believe humans descended from bears. Although my informants had alluded to aspects of this belief indirectly, it was not until the late 1980s that a report documenting the belief was published (Peillen 1986). Up until that time it had been passed orally from one generation of Basque speakers to the next, who were always careful not to share the information with non-Basque speakers. Soon after I had discovered the existence of this ursine genealogy, other bits and pieces of ethnographic evidence began to fall into place, among them folktales that speak of a young woman who mates with a bear and gives birth to a half-human, half-bear offspring. Once the ursine origin of humans was plugged into the interpretive frame of these stories, the adventures of the hybrid being took on a new significance. As a result, I began to process other European ethnographic data through a different lens, one that was no longer purely anthropocentric in nature, but rather animist, informed more by what has been referred to in recent years as a relational ontology (Bird-David 1999; Harvey 2006; Harrison-Buck 2018). Bear and Human: Facets of a Multi-Layered Relationship from Past to Recent Times, with Emphasis on Northern Europe, ed. by Oliver Grimm (Turnhout: Brepols, 2023), pp. 1107–1120 FHG 10.1484.M.TANE-EB.5.134380 This is an open access publication distributed under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International License. Whereas evidence for belief in an ursine genealogy has been well documented among North American and Eurasian indigenous peoples (Hallowell 1926; Rockwell 1991), that such a belief once shaped the daily lives and social practices of Europeans had not been contemplated until quite recently (Bertolotti 1992; 1994; Shepard/Sanders 1992; Lajoux 1996; Shepard 1999; 2007; Pauvert 2014). Yet there are many folkloric traces pointing to the veneration of bears, particularly in the Pyrenean region and even more concretely in Euskal Herria, the historical Basque Country (Fig. 1). However, it was not until the end of the 20th century when the Basque anthropologist Txomin Peillen published his interview with the last two Basque-speaking bear hunters of Zuberoa – an elderly father and his son – that we had concrete written evidence of the mindset that accompanied this archaic belief (Peillen 1986). It appears that the belief had been circulating orally for a long time, but that it was never shared with non-Basque speakers (Frank 2008b). In that interview, after the tape-recorder had been turned off, Petiri Prébende, the father, started talking about bears, namely, European brown bears (Ursus arctos). And when he did, he stated the following: “Lehenagoko eüskaldünek gizona hartzetik jiten zela sinhesten zizien” (“Basques used to believe that humans descended from bears”). He went on to talk about the power of bear paws and how the bear had created human beings (Peillen 1986, 173). Hence, evidence emanating from the Pyrenean zone, most especially from zones in which Euskara (Basque), a language classed as pre-Indo-European, was or is still spoken, should be examined with care. Moreover, there is substantial evidence that bears played a special role in the wider belief system of Europeans; that the veneration and respect paid to bears may well have been grounded in a similar understanding, one that allowed bears to be viewed as ancestors and kin as well as being endowed with supernatural powers (Lajoux 1996; Frank 2008a; 2009; Pastoureau 2011; Corvino 2013). Overview of the folktales Over the past twenty years I have endeavored to lay out the possible implications of a specific set of European folktales in which the main protagonist is portrayed as having an ursine ancestry. His father is a bear and his mother a female human. The tale is known as “The Bear’s Son”, and along with its variants it is probably the most widely disseminated European folktale ever recorded (see Hirsch, this volume). The term utilized here, that is, “The Bear’s Son”, is an informal one, used in conjunction with “John the Bear” to refer to a group of related narratives, categorized formally by folklorists as tale type ATU 301.1 However, the worldview reflected in the storyline with its half-human, half-bear protagonist has never been the subject of serious investigation. Questions have never been asked concerning the reason that the hero was assigned this genealogy in the beginning. Neither has there been a concerted attempt to study the European tale in a comparative light, that of the hunter-gatherer animist cosmology implicit in stories found among Native Americans and Siberian peoples where bears are considered ancestors and therefore kin. In those tales a woman often marries or mates with a bear and has offspring, a plotline that reflects the ursine genealogy and the veneration of bears that went along with this relational ontology (Hallowell 1926; Barbeau 1945; Wallace 1949; Rockwell 1991, 116–125; Shepard/Sanders 1992). Some of the most well-preserved versions of the European tales, including those evidencing the most archaic structural elements and most undisturbed plotline, emanate from former Basque-speaking 1 In 2004 an updated version of the Aarne-Thompson tale type index (Aarne/Thompson 1961) was published (Uther 2004). Although in the present chapter tale types will be referenced as ATU (Aarne-Thompson-Uther), I would note that value and use of tale type indexes, including the most recent iteration of them, have been called into question (Goldberg 1984; Dundes 1997; Jason 2006). 1108 zones of France and Spain and from the current Basque-speaking region itself. 2 It is noteworthy that the most archaic variants of the tale are found in the westernmost part of Europe, especially in the Pyrenean zone and its immediate environs, for this is the same zone in which the belief in bearancestors continued to circulate into the 20th century and where performances featuring ritualized bear hunts still take place each year (Bakels/Boer, this volume; Gastou 1987; Truffaut 1988; 2010; Pauvert 2014; Gual 2017). Further research concerning this core belief points to the strong possibility that it was once present across much of Europe. Even though explicit references to the ursine genealogy of humans have not been documented in the rest of Europe, as will be shown, there are many cultural practices and beliefs that point to the previous veneration of bears and bear-ancestors (Frank 2008a; b; 2009; Pastoureau 2011; Corvino 2013). Summary of the Bear’s Son Tale After comparing the storyline of many dozens of the European versions of these tales as well as variants of them taken to North America in centuries past, the contours of the earlier plot slowly came into view. What also became clear is that some versions contained plot elements that were more archaic than those found in other variants in terms of the implied worldview, completeness of the storyline and the logic embedded in the sequence of episodes that make up the plotline. As might be expected, this was the case of the certain folktales collected in the Pyrenean region where, as we have noted, evidence for the belief in ursine ancestors was still circulating well into the 20th century. Before continuing, a few words are in order about the methodology used in the analysis of the variants of the Bear’s Son Tale. If a researcher has several versions of a manuscript – in this case many versions of a folktale – and it is one with no known original, then established methods of textual criticism can be used to reconstruct what appears to be the earliest version of the text. One of these methods is called stemmatics. I have applied an updated version of this method as described by Frog (2013). The approach involves comparing extant versions of a text to identify the commonalities, additions and modifications that show up. As part of that task, one is concerned with the cultural conceptualizations that surface in the variants. These can suggest why certain structural elements were retained, developed, or lost over time. And these structural components of the plot are linked to the strength of the conceptual frames that were operating in the background, shaping the production and modification of the plot and the nature of the characters. In this instance special attention has been placed on identifying clues in the texts for the belief that humans descended from bears and for the animist relational ontology which supported that belief. In the plot summary that follows, the protagonist is referred to as Little Bear. The tale begins with a description of a young woman who is 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 leave the den and 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. 2 Although analysis of the individual tales recorded in the Pyrenean zone lies outside the scope of this paper, there are many written sources (Vinson 1883, 90–92; Barandiaran 1973–1983, II, 301–305; Satrústegui 1975, 18–21; Bidart 1978, 80–83; 1979, 130–137; Arratibel 1980, 65–74; Cerquand 1986, 78–85; Barbier 1991, 84–94, 129–132, 151–152, 157–158). 1109 Early on, he has an encounter which allows him to acquire his Animal Helpers. Walking along a path in the woods, he spies four animals ahead of him standing next to the carcass of a deer. They are a lion, a dog, an eagle, and an ant. Lion calls out to him: “We’re hungry and have been arguing about how to divide up the meat. Can you help us?”3 Little Bear responds saying that he will try. “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, Lion responds: “You’ve done so well with the division that we want to reward you.” And each of them gives him a talisman, telling him that when he requires their help all he needs to do is touch it and call out the animal’s name. That way he will gain the animal’s innate abilities and take on the shape of the animal in question. Lion gives him a tuft of fur, Dog another tuft, 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 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, an element typical of an animist mindset. The young woman tells him to come back the next day and enter 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 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, remove the egg inside, and then take the egg and break it on my forehead. When that happens the egg inside my head will break and I will become mortal and die.” Since Little Bear has been pre-equipped with his talismans, he is well able to follow these instructions successfully, shape-shifting into one animal after another, while his opponent does the same. In the end the Little Bear succeeds, and his opponent, having received the fatal blow to his forehead, is no longer immortal. From one point of view, the identity of 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 serpent or dragon who is killed by a blow to his forehead with the magical egg (Satrústegui 1975, 18–21; Frank 2019). A closer analysis of the plot brings into view other cultural conceptualizations that informed the interpretive framework for the tale, revealing it to be an animist 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 firmly embedded in the narrative itself (Hallowell 1926; Brightman 2002; Berres et al. 2004; Brightman et al. 2012). 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 exteriorization of a familiar episode from the traditional narrative. 3 Unless indicated otherwise, the translations are the author’s. 1110 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 this perspective, the role of the four 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 1). In the end, it is the magic pigeon 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. Ecocentric coding There are other lessons that in times past a child might have learned from this story. It is a tale that goes counter to the so-called “law of the jungle”, the Social Darwinian view of Nature that interpreted the “survival of the fittest” scenario as the superiority of brute strength and/or self-interest in the so-called “struggle for survival” (Weiss 2010). This is a view that featured prominently in 19th-century thought and is still alive today in some quarters. In contrast to that view of Nature, 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 natural order. 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 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 (Paine 1969; 1980; Polis et al. 2000). At the same time, it speaks to us of the eternal cycle of life and death. As we have seen, the ursine ancestry of the main character, his hybrid nature, is highlighted in these European tales and appears to be grounded in an archaic belief that held that humans descended from bears. This can be compared to the many Native American origin myths that claim bears as ancestors, too. And even if direct descent is not claimed, bears often share family relations through marriage and sexual relations, beliefs frequently exteriorized in narratives and legends. As a result, in these Native American oral traditions bears often appear as both ancestors and kin (Kassabaum/ Peles 2020, 111). The plot of the European tale unfolds in a landscape infused with trophic relations, a metaphysics characterized by an awareness of the intricate reciprocal relations inherent in Nature. The complex food-chain network of predator-prey interactions is emphasized, rather than the triumph of “man over beast”. Animals are collaborators and function as active participants, not passive by-standers. Overall, the plot is framed by elements typical of an animist worldview. When compared to Native American spirituality, we find evidence of shape-shifting and can identify what appears to be the European counterpart of a Native American vision quest by means of which the seeker obtains spirit animal helpers and creates a medicine bundle composed of talismans symbolizing each guardian animal (McGaa 1990, 75–83; Woodhead 1992, 60–63, 121–128; Waugh 1996, 56–60; Encyclopaedia Britannica 2015; Posthumus 2018). The plot itself revolves around ritual combats between two shape-shifters, each aided by their respective Animal Helpers (Shepard 1999; 2007; Frank 2016a; 2019). However, these aspects of the tales did not attract the attention of scholars, probably because researchers were unfamiliar with the tenets of an animist ontology. Instead of pursuing how evidence for the ursine genealogy implicit in these tales might be explained or otherwise documented ethno1111 graphically, it has been ignored and treated as a mere curiosity. Indeed, by the end of the 19th century folklorists were busy concentrating their efforts on a very different task, that of classifying the narratives according to motif and tale type (Cosquin 1887, 1–27; Dundes 1997; Frank 2015). By 1910 Panzer had documented 221 European variants of ATU 301, the descent of the Bear’s Son hero to the Underworld (Panzer 1910). In a study published in 1959, 57 Hungarian versions of the tale were mentioned (Kiss 1959), and in 1992, Stitt, in his study of 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 1992, 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 Finno-Ugric languages, i.e. in Finnish, Saami and Magyar (Hungarian), and there is even one example of the tale found among the Mansi (Voguls) of Siberia (Von Sadovszky/Hoppál 1995, 118–120, 152). In addition to the preoccupation with classification by motif and tale type, what one also observes is that when the tale has been analyzed, that analysis has been geared primarily to finding counterparts to the tale in epic poems and sagas, that is, in literary works (Panzer 1910; Glosecki 1988; 1989; Stitt 1992; Anderson 2016). What has not been explored properly is whether the ursine genealogy intrinsic to the tales was part of larger animist worldview that left traces in the ethnographic and ethnohistoric record, that is, in the real world. We need to remember that the label frequently used by folklorists, namely “The Bear’s Son”, is a broad one.4 It encompasses ATU 301 and all its variants. In addition, this tale type has been linked to ATU 650A “Strong John.” A key element in the plotline of ATU 301 is the fact that the protagonist acquires two or three unusually strong and fully anthropomorphic companions who help him. What has not been recognized, however, is that the fully anthropomorphic helpers have replaced the Animal Helpers found in the older variants. This caused the tale of the four animals to end up being relegated to a totally separate and supposedly unrelated tale type, ATU 554, called “The Grateful Animals”. And, to complicate matters even more, as will be demonstrated, the Animal Helpers resurface in a tale type referred to as ATU 302, namely “The Ogre’s (Devil’s) Heart in the Egg”. To summarize, over time the plot of the tale broke into pieces. The variants that resulted were reshaped, adjusting themselves in different ways to reflect the changing cultural norms of Europeans. Hence, we can see that narratives associated with the expression “The Bear’s Son” focus on 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 650A “Strong John”, ATU 554 “The Grateful Animals”, and ATU 302, now shortened to “Soul in an Egg”. Over time the storyline and episodes associated with earlier versions of the tale ended up becoming fragmented and, as a result, became classified as different tale types (ATU 650A, ATU 554, ATU 302, and ATU 301, plus at least four subtypes of ATU 301). The disappearance of the Animal Helpers In the tale known as “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 with extraordinary strength. 4 ATU 301, referred to globally as “The Bear’s Son”, is the term used to refer particularly to versions of the tales that have been compared to northern sagas, such as Beowulf. In other instances, the same set of tales carries a title that highlights the name of the protagonist in that language: John the Bear in English, Juan el Osito in Spanish, Jan de l’Os in Catalan, Jan l’Ourset in 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. 1112 Although the main protagonist is still often 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. Although it is not clear exactly at what point in time the human helpers were substituted for the four animals, De Blécourt (2012, 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 types of variants. One type is represented by the set of stories that continue to retain the animal helpers (ATU 302 and ATU 554) and, to a certain extent, imprints from the animist coding typical of the earlier storyline. But in these tales, the ursine identity of the hero is often lost. The other type consists of 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 have been transformed into human companions. Not uncommonly, the hero known as the Bear’s Son was elevated even further, as elements from a hierarchically organized society were introduced into the frame, a backdrop typical of the genre of literary “magic” or “wonder tales”. These became popular and highly influential. They circulated in various print collections published initially in the late 17th century and were followed up by other extensive compilations of tales in the 18th and 19th centuries. These changes allowed the main character to be reconfigured as a hero who descends to the Underworld (often represented as simply a deep hole in the ground) where he rescues a princess (or three princesses). In this instance, each of the princesses gives him a talisman that later on allows him to be recognized as their savior. In the end he is rewarded at court and marries the daughter of the king. Another dominant theme is that of betrayal. The hero is abandoned by his companions who refuse to haul him up out of the hole, an act of betrayal that in the end the hero punishes. Clearly, the backdrop has been transformed and a new interpretive template is now functioning. However, a few key elements from the older storyline still show up. Factors leading to changes in the text and the fragmentation of its narrative structure Over time, the cultural schemas supporting the earlier animist ontology lost their hold and were replaced by new ones. This contributed to the loss of awareness on the part of subsequent generations of storytellers and translators of the tale concerning the ursine genealogy, the deeper meaning of the four Animal Helpers and the significance of the shape-shifting that takes place. In the Middle Ages, Christianity contributes to this erosion, bringing about a strict dichotomy, a conceptual divide which attempted to set humans totally apart from animals. And, as this portrayal of animal otherness becomes increasingly entrenched in the worldview utilized by both the tellers of the tale and their audiences, it becomes harder to understand the earlier interpretive framework. In the eyes of the Church, the European bear cult was perceived as a threat and impediment to the 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 considered even an ancestor or relative of humans (Pastoureau 2011, 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. Further proof of this veneration lies in the fact that both Germanic and Slavic languages use noa terms – euphemisms – to refer to the animal. This recalls the wide-spread pattern of semantic avoidance documented among the indigenous peoples of North America and Eurasia (Black 1998; Sokolova 2000; Pastoureau 2011; Nagy 2017, 46–52). As is well known, the Germanic as well as the Slavic words for “bear” are not the same as those used in the other Indo-European languages (see Nedoma and Udolph, this 1113 volume; Pokorny 1959, III, 875; Buck 1988; Praneuf 1989). The words for “bear” in other IndoEuropean languages derive from a common Proto-Indo-European root, namely, *h2 rtƙos.5 It is logical to assume that the semantic avoidance evidenced in Germanic and Slavic languages was brought about because earlier speakers of these languages were operating from a mindset similar to that of indigenous hunter-gatherer populations who also show deference to bears, often viewing them as kin or ancestors and believing that bears hear everything that is said, especially what is said about them. Wherever 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 it, choosing rather to speak about the animal using euphemisms. In times past, the common term utilized 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 (cf. Nedoma and Udolph, this volume). Consequently, the Slavic and Germanic words for “bear” can be considered semantic residue left over from this older ursine belief system. In times past, evidence for the belief in the supernatural powers of the bear, especially its omniscience, was not limited to these parts of Europe. Indeed, throughout much of Europe “in the Carolingian 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, 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, 3). Whereas the struggle of the medieval Church against the bear was ultimately successful, that is, in terms of eliminating most overt traces of the ancient ursine cults, what it was not able to do was to stop storytellers from passing on tenets of the ursine belief system, albeit covertly, in the form of traditional folktales. These stories insured that the hero’s life and times would be transmitted orally, under the radar, across generations even as the storytellers and the members of their audiences were increasingly unaware of the message implicit in the plot itself. 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 animist cosmovision. As noted, one of the significant changes that can be detected in the tales is the bifurcation that took place with respect to the identity of the Animal Helpers. In the older version there are four animals who give the hero the power to shape-shift, a characteristic typical of animist ontologies. In what are more recently anthropocentrically coded versions the hero’s helpers are transformed into two or three men endowed with immense strength as is the hero himself. Kinship affirmation The ursine genealogy which portrays bears as ancestors and therefore kin is a central tenet of bear ceremonialism. Therefore, it is not surprising to find stories in which a human female mates with or marries a bear in locations where bear ceremonialism was or still is practiced (Deans 1889; Edsman 1956; McClellan 1970; Henderson 2020). The presence of such stories is one of the constants of 5 For discussion of the Basque term for “bear” as well as further discussion of the Indo-European forms, cf. Frank 2017, 93–109. 1114 bear ceremonialism (Rockwell 1991; Shepard/Sanders 1992; Frank 2016b; Wiget 2021). In Europe this trait was accompanied by the belief that viable offspring could result from such a union. Surprising as it might seem, for centuries Europeans continued to believe not only that bears often mated with human females but that a mixed blood offspring could result. Allegedly true stories about a bear abducting a young woman and the two of them living together continued to circulate in the Pyrenean region well into the 19th century. Just how widespread this belief really was is underlined by the work of William of Auvergne (1228–1249) who was one of the most remarkable intellectuals of the first half of the 13th century. The question of bear-human mating was taken up in one of William of Auvergne’s works, De universe creaturarum. In that work Auvergne reports an exemplum notissimum, i.e. a well-known exemplary story: One day in Saxony, a bear of enormous strength abducted the wife of a knight and imprisoned her in a cave where he usually hibernated. She was a woman of great beauty, so that after a time her body awakened the bear’s concupiscence. He raped her, and in his infernal den had sexual relations with her for several years. Three sons were born of this union. Happily, one day a woodsman freed the woman and her sons, she returned to her husband and lodged her sons near the château in the sight of everyone; later, they were even knighted in the presence of the great Saxon barons. They did not differ from other knights except for their abundant hairiness and their habit of inclining their head slightly to the left, in the manner of bears. They were, besides, given the name of their father and were called Ursini, sons of the bear (Pastoureau 2011, 77). Auvergne goes on to argue in favor of the actual existence of these unions: “Unlike mules, the offspring of cross-species mating, children born from a bear and a woman can procreate and have descendants” (Pastoureau 2011, 78). It is in light of these beliefs, namely, that creatures born from the union of a woman and a bear could be fertile and have descendants, that we can understand genealogies that portray a bear as the ancestor of a king. For example, we have the chronicle Gesta Danorum from around 1200 by Saxo Grammaticus in which this Danish scholar recounts that the great-grandfather of King Sven II Estridsen of Denmark (1047–1076) was the son of a bear, a dynastic legend that goes back further in time. The story told held that a bear had abducted a young woman and “married” her in his cave where she later gave birth to a son. “In the official genealogies compiled at the Danish court throughout the thirteenth century – the great century of genealogies in Scandinavia – the bear as ancestor of a king held an acknowledged place. No one doubted that a bear was one of the founders of the Danish dynasty […]” (Pastoureau 2011, 79). Rather than damaging the royal name, the animal ancestry seems to have given a mythical prestige to the Danish dynasty. Indeed, it appears to have aroused the envy of the kings of Sweden and Norway, to the point that from 1260 on the kings of Norway also claimed descent from that same founding bear. As Pastoureau notes, nothing was invented by Saxo Grammaticus himself for as early as the 11th century, literary and narrative texts were circulating that had a bear among the ancestors of various prestigious figures. Among them was Earl Siward of Northumberland, who died in 1055 and whose father was said to have had “bear’s ears”. That latter feature was considered the remaining bodily inheritance of the bear ancestor that had procreated with a woman (Brunner 2007, 26; Pastoureau 2011, 80). Indeed, in many of the folktales what set the bear’s son apart from other children was that he was extraordinarily hairy or that he had “bear’s ears”. Finally, with respect to other ways the ursine genealogy manifested itself in social practice, we find evidence that integral to the veneration shown for the slain bear were ritual acts of affirmation of the kinship between humans and bears. The theme of a ritual wedding involving the slain bear is well documented in Finland (see Piludu, this volume). For example, according to a 18th-century account from Viitasaari in central Finland, upon the arrival of the hunters carrying the slain bear, a ritual “wedding” was performed. That ritual repeated many of the customs of ordinary weddings but in this case was celebrated between the bear and one of the girls of the village. In this way, the 1115 kinship bond between bear and humans was symbolically renewed (Sarmela 2006, 2–3, 16).6 And, once again, a feigned wedding or coupling of a human and the slain bear finds its counterpart in other locations where bear ceremonialism has been documented. The larger picture emerges when different threads of the overarching animist belief system are woven together. At first, they might appear to be random, unrelated ethnographic bits and pieces. But when examined using the interpretive frame of bear ceremonialism and its associated ursine genealogy, they take on new importance. For instance, we have certain scenic elements that are an integral part of the performances known as fêtes de l’ours, celebrated each year in the village of Arles-sur-Tech in the Pyrenean region (Fig. 2; see Bakels/Boer, this volume). The scenes represented could have been viewed as reenactments of the initial encounter of the young woman with the bear and their subsequent mating as narrated in the folktales. This interpretation is quite possible since this zone is one where in times past the events portrayed in the tale of “Jean l’Ours” would have been familiar to everyone in attendance. The scene in question has a young woman called Rosetta – actually a man dressed as a woman – being grabbed by the Bear who attempts to drag her into his den which has been constructed in the middle of the plaza. The Bear also goes after one or more women in attendance and brings them into his lair, a practice first described nearly a hundred years ago by an eyewitness, the British folklorist Violet Alford (Alford 1930, 173–174). The feigned sexual coupling of the Bear with Rosetta as well as with actual women in the audience is commonplace still today in these annual performances. Concluding commentary To summarize, the stories classified collectively as “The Bear’s Son” represent one of the most widespread motifs found in European folklore. Although the narrative has been analyzed from many angles, it is only recently that the larger implications of this set of tales have been taken into consideration, especially the way that they resonate with the tenets and practices of bear ceremonialism. This rethinking has allowed the importance of the stories to be better appreciated. When projected against a backdrop that was once informed by the belief that humans descended from bears, the narratives become a key to understanding how a central tenet of this much earlier animist cosmology came to be transmitted across time, albeit with modifications. That humans descended from bears meant that human animals could be viewed as having a mixed ancestry. And that genealogy is one that can be traced back to the intermediary figure represented by the half-bear, half-human main character of these folktales. However, evidence for the belief in that genealogy is not limited to the storyline of these tales. Rather there is ample reason to believe that the ursine ancestry of humans also left an indelible imprint in the ethnographic record and even in language. Even though the belief that humans descended from bears was already falling out of favor during the Middle Ages, the conviction 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, 68–85). Indeed, it is not unusual to find folk heroes and even actual kings tracing their own lineage back to such a bear-human mating (Glosecki 1988; 1989). Hence, until that older cosmology faded completely from view, the Bear’s Son Tale along with its variants was probably interpreted by audiences in a very different and far more realistic fashion than it is today. 6 For further discussion of the ritual wedding, cf. Pentikäinen 2007, 63–76. 1116 Bibliography Aarne/Thompson 1961: A. Aarne/S. 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