I have unearthed three family myths: the Goñi myth, the Zornoza myth, and the Alzate myth.
The Goñi myth, vouched for by an aunt of mine who died in San Sebastian at an age of ninety or more, established, according to her, that she was a descendant of Don Teodosio de Goñi, a Navarrese caballero who lived in the time of Witiza, and who, after killing his father and mother at the instigation of the devil, betook himself to Mount Aralar wearing an iron ring about his neck, and dragging a chain behind him, thus pilloried to do penance. One day, a terrible dragon appeared before him during a storm.
Don Teodosio lifted up his soul unto God, and thereupon the Archangel Saint Michael revealed himself to him, in his dire extremity, and broke his chains, in commemoration of which event Don Teodosio caused to be erected the chapel of San Miguel in Excelsis on Mount Aralar.
There were those who endeavoured to convince my aunt that in the time of this supposititious Don Teodosio, which was the early part of the eighth century, surnames had not come into use in the Basque country, and even, indeed, that there were at that time no Christians there—in short they maintained that Don Teodosio was a solar myth; but they were not able to convince my aunt. She had seen the chapel of San Miguel on Aralar, and the cave in which the dragon lived, and a document wherein Charles V. granted to Juan de Goñi the privilege of renaming his house the Palace of San Miguel, as well as of adding a dragon to his coat of arms, besides a cross in a red field, and a broken chain.
The Zornoza myth was handed down through my paternal grandmother of that name.
I remember having heard this lady say when I was a child, that her
family might be traced in a direct line to the chancellor Pero López de
Ayala, and, I know not through what lateral branches, also to St.
Francis Xavier.
My grandmother vouched for the fact that her father had sold the documents and parchments in which these details were set forth, to a titled personage from Madrid.
The Zornozas boast an escutcheon which is embellished with a band, a number of wolves, and a legend whose import I do not recall.
Indeed, wolves occur in all the escutcheons of the Baroja, Alzate and Zornoza families, in so far as I have been able to discover, and I take them to be more or less authentic. We have wolves passant, wolves rampant, and wolves mordant. The Goñi escutcheon also displays hearts. If I become rich, which I do not anticipate, I shall have wolves and hearts blazoned on the doors of my dazzling automobile, which will not prevent me from enjoying myself hugely inside of it.
Turning to the Alzate myth, it too runs back to antiquity and the primitive struggles of rival families of Navarre and Labourt. The Alzates have been lords of Vera ever since the fourteenth century.