Anku

Anku (bret. ankoù) is the image of death in Breton mythology.

In the folklore of the inhabitants of the peninsula Brittany is a harbinger of death. Usually it becomes a person who died in a particular settlement last of the year or, according to another version, the first buried in the local cemetery. Unlike the death known throughout France and many other European countries in the image of a bony old woman with a scythe, Anku has always been presented as a man.

He has the appearance of a tall, emaciated man with long white hair and empty eye sockets, dressed in a black raincoat and a black wide-brimmed hat. This man is driving a funeral cart pulled by skeletons of horses (or a yellow skinny mare). Sometimes anku takes the form of a skeleton.

Sometimes only the creaking of his cart is heard, audible without any visible sound source.

There are quite a few stories about anka in Brittany . In some cases, people help ankh to repair a cart or a scythe and in gratitude he warns them about their imminent death and thus they have time to receive the last communion and receive the last communion (viaticum).