This work contains eight character pieces or Fantasies, inspired in characters of Basque mythology. They happen in the composer’s imagination while he is walking through a beechwood.

The word “Selvático” is used by the Spanish writer Pío Baroja to name the different people in the north of Europe in whose surroundings abound water and vegetation, and for which woman is powerful, even sacred, in contrast to the “desert people”, where she is considered the origin of evil and sin.

The Introduction displays the harmonic and melodic material that will appear varied in the rest of the pieces. The characters of the work are Basojaun, the Lord of the Woods, and the Lamias, daughters of the goddess Mari that appear in woods and rivers to seduce Knights. The seventh variation is an “Akelarre”, where all the characters meet.