It is the 15th  day of August, in the Year of our Lord 778. The Frankish army of Charlemagne is homeward bound from their Holy War against the Sarrazins [sic] of Saragossa. Roland, Count of Brittany and nephew of the emperor, leads the rearguard of Frankish knights through the Pyrenees. At the pass of Ronceveaux, he is ambushed by the Sarrazin army assisted by the traitor Ganelon and a great battle ensues. Armed with his legendary blade, Durandal, he fells scores of infidels with his brother-in-arms, the not-so-priestly Archbishop Turpin. The enemy, however, proves to be too numerous and the fifth onslaught under the dragon pennants of the ‘Sarrazin Abisme… cankered with guile and every felony, … [who] loves murder and treachery’ (Song of Roland, vv 1631-1635) is the death knell for Roland’s band.

Surrounded by fallen knights, Roland, in a last desperate act, sounds his olifant to call Charlemagne to his aid. The horn’s call echoes through the high peaks, unanswered. Roland blows the olifant so loud and long that ‘out of his mouth the clear blood leaped and ran, about his brain the very temples cracked’ (Song of Roland, vv 1763-1764). As his last companions fall, a semi-conscious Roland, ‘for all his brain is issued from his ears’ (Song of Roland, vv 2260), attempts to break Durandal by striking the cliff face, so that it might not fall into the hands of his foes.

However, the relics concealed in the hilt of the sword, including ‘St Peter’s tooth, the Blood of Saint Basile, some of the hairs of my Lord, Saint Denise, [and] Some of the Robe… worn by Saint Mary’ (Song of Roland, vv 2346-2348) render it unbreakable. Instead, he sets Durandal in the rock, but not before bonking one last straggling Sarrazin over the head with his olifant, shattering it in the process. A good 800 lines of verse after the blowing of the olifant, Roland finally expires and is fast-tracked to paradise by the archangels Michael and Gabriel. Until recently, Durandal could still be seen where Roland had planted it in the stone; it has unfortunately disappeared, likely stolen, in June 2024.

The Song of Roland, an 11th-12th-century epic poem written in Old French by a poet we know only as Turold, is a jewel of Medieval epic literature. It is, unfortunately, more fiction than fact. The ‘Sarrazins’ that Roland supposedly fought never ventured as far North as Ronceveaux; also, the poet slips up on the names he gives them: Marsile, Aelroth, Corsablix… they don’t sound very Umayyad. The extant manuscript of the Song of Roland is contemporary with the first Crusade (1096-99) and thus probably represents an excellent piece of propaganda to inspire chivalry and courage in crusading knights. So who actually beset Roland in Ronceveaux? Charlemagne’s court chronicler Einhard tells us that, as Charlemagne returned from Spain ‘high in the Pyrenees… he experienced the Basques… Roland, the lord of the Breton March and many others died in that skirmish’.

Who were these ruthless mountain men? Who are the Basques?

The Basques have continuously inhabited an area of the western Pyrenees straddling modern France and Spain for millennia. Basques and their language are genetic and linguistic isolates in Western Europe. Paleo-geneticists and linguists alike have long puzzled over the Basque origin question. Modern scholars propagated the belief that the Basques were direct descendants of the Cro-Magnons, the initial Homo sapiens colonisers of Europe (c. 56,800 BC). Like Roland’s legend, this theory has been debunked and genetic isolation of the Basques is thought secondary to a ‘failure to admix’ with other ancient peoples: the Celts, Phoenicians, Romans, Carthaginians, Goths and Franks, who had come together throughout the rest of Iberia since the Iron Age. The Romans encountered Basque tribes, the Vascones (from which we get the words Basque and Gascon) and the Aquitani, whose ancient language Aquitanian is a precursor of modern Basque. The Vascones seem to have negotiated relative autonomy with the Roman Empire, with sparse evidence of Roman influence in mountainous areas. The Basque language is a testament to this cultural isolationism and conservationism: it is the only modern descendant of the Paleo-European languages spoken by Neolithic European farmers (8000-6000 BC) before the spread and overwhelming dominance of the Indo-European language family in the Bronze Age (c. 3000 BC).

The Basque language is so difficult to learn for native Indo-European language speakers because it is so fundamentally different, in almost every respect. Indo-European languages take as a given the nominative-accusative alignment, i.e. he takes her or he smiles. Basque, like Georgian, Mayan, Tibetan, Pashto and Kurdish, employs an ergative-absolutive alignment, i.e. he her takes and him smiles. So far, so straightforward. But to add further complexity, Basque has at least 16 cases with additional compound cases; as a result, it is estimated a single Basque noun can take over 450,000 inflected forms. There is also significant dialectical variation between Basque regions. The modern Basque language developed in the 1960s and the variant now taught in schools has attempted to establish itself as the dominant strain. Its international imprint has been small. Basque whalers in the 17th century are known to have developed a Basque-Icelandic pidgin, which was spoken in the Westfjords of Iceland. If Basque is not already the most bizarre language in the world, Basque-Icelandic pidgin really must be.

Remarkably, the preservation of an ancient culture in the Basque country is not only limited to linguistics, but more tangible cultural phenomena such as their traditional sports and music, which remain popular. The term ‘Basque pelota’ stands for a collection of 14 different ball sports played on an assortment of traditional courts. Some specialities, such as hand-pelota, in which the players strike a hard leather ball against a single wall, trace their roots back to ancient Greek games. Other specialities have evolved out of real tennis, the precursor to modern lawn tennis. Real tennis or jeu de paume (literally ‘game of palm’), is thought to have initially been played by medieval monks palming a ball across their cloisters, which explains the unusual court design with galleries, a penthouse and buttress thought to mimic that of original monastic churches. A very rare Basque pelota variant called pasaka is only played on the 16th-century real tennis court of Bastide Clairence, and closely mimics the original monastic game. Although the medieval real tennis courts have largely disappeared in continental Europe, the Basques have conserved and continually used at least four of them, taking down the middle net and playing only against the back wall, converting them into pelota ‘trinquets’, yet another court variation of Pelota.

Pelota is still very much alive: as you drive through the French Basque country, every village has its own fronton (single-walled pelota court). It is one of the few Basque exports to reach international popularity, with professional cesta punta (variant with a long wicker-basket glove) leagues in the US. In traditional matches in the Basque country, after a point has been played, the teams’ scores are not just announced but sung by an appointed score-singer. During the first points of a match, the score-singer intones one point for the leading team and ‘esperanza’ – hope – for the team yet to get off the mark. At midday, play stops and the whole crowd stands to sing the traditional Angélus. The Basques and other Pyrenean peoples, such as the Béarnais, are well known for their polyphonic male choirs. This stems from a long oral tradition and to this day, bertsolaris, improvising bards, are still celebrated in Basque communities.

And yet Basque cultural pride and isolationism has had darker consequences. The 20th century saw the rise of the terrorist separatist group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (Basque Homeland and Liberty, ETA). The movement was inflamed by political, linguistic and cultural suppression under Franco in the 1960s. ETA conducted violent attacks which killed 829 people between 1968 and 2010. The group only disbanded as recently as 2018 and there are still marks of its presence and ideology, with French and Spanish place names erased from road signs and liberation-style murals in the inner cities. So far, the peace holds.

Today in France and Spain, the cross-border Basque country maintains a strong and unique cultural identity that unites. There are differences, of course, noticeable in Basque dialects, climate (the French side is much greener) and cultural influence. The Basques live the ancient day-to-day, and theirs is a way of life that they have carefully preserved and nurtured over millennia. To be in the land of the Basques, surrounded on one side by the high peaks of the Pyrenees, and to hear the pelotes crack against the frontons, is to be pulled into the orbit of a rich, energetic and distinctive culture. Long live the Basques.