The first time I visited the Basque, I both astounded and irritated my husband and son, in equal measure, by my oft-repeated mantra “I know this place”. As we journeyed about highways and byways of the Basque country the landscape seemed just shockingly familiar to me, a strong feeling of déjà vu or more correctly déjâ vécu (roughly translated as ‘having already lived through’) or could it have been inherited memory? Whether I believe in ancestral memories or not, and after this experience I am leaning towards belief, the consequence of this feeling was to make me believe I had returned to a long forgotten home.
The Basques say when God created Adam, he got his bones from a Basque cemetery, certainly the question of their heritage and genetics is still being researched, but all agree they are amongst the oldest Europeans with a language with no demonstrable genealogical relationship with any other living language. Basques have a close attachment to their homes and the family house names have transmuted in to Basque surnames, much the same as my own family who took the name ‘woodhouse’ or ‘wodehouse’ from the ancestral home in Wombourne, Staffordshire in the 13th century.
I love the Basque country and long to return for another psychic fix.
