A Celtic Figure With Its Own Regional Grammar

James MacKillop's dictionary of Celtic mythology situates the Ankou within the specifically Breton, and by extension broader Brythonic Celtic, tradition of death folklore, distinguishing it from Irish and Scottish Gaelic death-omen figures such as the banshee, which warns of death within a specific family line rather than administering it, and from the generalised Grim Reaper figure of wider European Christian art.

The Ankou's cart is sometimes described as accompanied by two spectral assistants who load the dying onto it, and regional variation exists in whether the figure is depicted as a skeleton, a tall cloaked man, or explicitly the identifiable ghost of last year's dead parishioner, reflecting the kind of localized elaboration typical of a belief still actively transmitted through oral storytelling within living communities rather than fixed by a single canonical text. The figure has become something of a cultural touchstone for Breton regional identity specifically, appearing in local art, festival and tourism material in a way that keeps the Ankou recognisably distinct from the pan-European skeletal Death figure it superficially resembles.