Who is the Ankou?
The Ankou is neither a god nor a demon. He was once a human being. According to Breton tradition, the last person to die in a parish in a given year becomes the Ankou and must fetch the souls of the dying until the next year begins. In some areas it is the first person to die in the new year.
He is imagined as a gaunt man or a skeleton with a broad-brimmed hat and a scythe. He drives a cart, the karrig an Ankou, often accompanied by two helpers. Anyone who hears its axle creak at night knows that someone in the village will soon die.
Sources
The most important collection is Anatole Le Braz’s La Légende de la Mort chez les Bretons armoricains of 1893. For it, Le Braz gathered stories from Lower Brittany, including many encounters with the Ankou. Théodore Hersart de La Villemarqué published older Breton songs in 1839 in the Barzaz Breiz, although his reworkings of them are disputed.
The Ankou in stone and paint
Several Breton churches and ossuaries have figures of the Ankou, often holding an arrow or a scythe. The danse macabre frescoes in the region’s old chapels show the same theme: death comes for everyone, whatever their station. The ethnologist Daniel Giraudon of the University of Brest has traced the Ankou through folklore and art.
Episode on this topic
- The Ankou: When Death Is a Neighbor (in German)
Further reading
- Anatole Le Braz: La Légende de la Mort chez les Bretons armoricains, 1893.
- Théodore Hersart de La Villemarqué: Barzaz Breiz, 1839.
- Daniel Giraudon: Sur les traces de l’Ankou.