Ankou

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• Lower Brittany (Basse-Bretagne), France · Breton

  Ankou

  Ankaw (Guémené-sur-Scorff)

  Death omens

  

  Anatole Le Braz describes the Ankou as death personified, "l'ouvrier de la mort" (death's workman): the last person to die in a parish each year becomes its Ankou for the year following, though at Guémené-sur-Scorff and Berné it is the first. He is pictured either as a very tall, thin man with long white hair under a broad felt hat, or as a skeleton in a shroud whose head turns constantly to survey his whole territory, carrying a scythe with its blade turned outward and travelling in a cart. Carved Ankous stood in Breton churches, and Le Braz remembered old women kneeling before the one at Ploumilliau.

  Earliest written source not verified

  Anatole Le Braz, La Légende de la mort chez les Bretons armoricains, ed. Georges Dottin (1923), ch. III "L'Ankou"

  Tradition · not evidence