Gather round the fire for a frightful tale to hear

[wayfaringwordhack]

...or at least I imagine there could be a frightful tale attached to the place I'm about to share, and share now I must, for frigg is being a very impatient, pushy pea to learn where yesterday's gate leads.

Turn the knob and push. Pay no mind to the squealing hinges. Their noise is not foreshadowing. Or is it?



In the Basque village of Sare, there is a cathedral


surrounded by a cemetery



with many traditional gravestones adorned with the Basque cross,



but one tomb in particular is quite different



Is this fellow a guardian jailer or an accomplice, chained to keep it from helping its master escape death's prison?



Difficult to see in the harsh light and deep shadow, but those immense chains (one on each side of the tomb), whose links are as thick as my thumb, are fastened to iron staples set deep in a large blocks of concrete.





Anyone have any suppositions to make about who might be buried here and why in such a fashion? (I don't have a clue.) Please share if your fancy has been tickled.

What I listened to while posting:
Joe Pug: Hymn 101
Joe Purdy: Why You
The White Buffalo: Oh Darling, What Have I Done?
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: Beat the Devil's Tattoo

Comments

[frigg.livejournal.com]

It is obviously the grave of an undead! I am surprised you even have to ask. ;)

(and I wouldn't have been so pushy if you hadn't been so slow about it)

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

How did the undead get there? What's the story behind it? :D

[frigg.livejournal.com]

Why don't you send me 10-15K words showing me just that? ;)

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

well that would take me away from WW and TBR. Is that what you want?

[frigg.livejournal.com]

Multi-tasking, my dear. Multi-tasking. ;)

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

You guys are a riot--I'm laughing reading your exchanges.

[frigg.livejournal.com]

*grin*

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Whoa and double whoa. Make it triple whoa! That little demon is something else--a demon with a halo!--and those chains, chains, chains.

I can't wait to listen to your music. Gonna click on "Oh Darling, What Have I done?" first.

A small-town magic user of no mean power, I'd guess, murdered at last, but honored and feared even in death.

S is a beautiful token of life in that space of stone, gravel, and metal, commemorating the dead (where even the flowers have died).

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Oh, I LOVE "Oh Darling, What Have I Done?"! THANK YOU.

I bet I love the others just as much.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yep, liked the others as well, but "Oh Darling, What Have I Done?" the best.

[xjenavivex.livejournal.com]

this is the tomb of an early physician. he understood what happens to the bodies of the dead when anatomy detectives are in town. perhaps he knew of a good necromancer or two. i think he was tired and wanted to be left alone. the bats - what a wonderful touch.

I love this. there are a zillion story ideas here.

[cathemery.livejournal.com]

A quick lookup informs me that bats can be a symbol of rebirth (for the Chinese, apparently it's a symbol of prosperity) (so, rich undead?).

Fencing comes to mind as a way of asserting the important of the person or person's family, but it can also mean, I think, that the person is separate from the others buried nearby.

I got excited about a result that said, "The Irurac bat symbolized the political union of the three Basque provinces" but it turned out to be a picture on a flag with three hands joined.

Some kind of shields on the fencing - is that a rosette boss on the gate or an animal face? The cross is slightly different, too - different time period, or variation in culture?

The size seems very imposing as well. And how it's angled is so different -- so demanding of attention. Fascinating how much is indicated about a time and place by the details. Very intriguing once one stops taking "it's a grave" for granted and looking at those details and wondering.

Someone important, and I'd guess that either they cared how they were buried or those left behind cared a lot. That must have cost.

Do the chains fasten to the lid or top, as if to prevent vandalism/opening, or are they decorative and go to the side of the coffin? I can't quite tell.

And it was expected that someone would want access to that space -- would leave something in the bowl, and possibly clean the stone and weed the space.

Obviously memorializing graves is important there - I can see plaques and flowers on other graves. Yet this one, whoever it was and however important, looks forgotten.

It may mean nothing, but we give meaning to things in our imaginations or find meaning in cultural references, and once we starting nothing details I think there is something in us that wants them to have meaning. Haunting sort of photo.

oh dear. That was a very bad unintended pun, and I was so proud of myself for not using "taking it for 'granite'" earlier. lol

[cathemery.livejournal.com]

p.s. Thanks for the fascinating glimpses!

[coffeesvp.livejournal.com]

It is not a tomb one should disturb.

[clarentine]

What I find the most intriguing is the angle of the tomb. It's like the whole thing's a door, tilted so the one inside could just open it and walk back out again. (You do find some of the most fascinating things to photograph!)

[pjthompson]

Wampyr!

[mindseas.livejournal.com]

I thought perhaps it could be the tomb of the Basque conquistador "El Loco," but I read that his body parts ended up in Venezuela.