Barbale

Also Known As: Georgian ბარბალე; also Barbare; Svan Barbol, Barbal and Barblash; Barbar-Babar or Babar in the older invocations; identified with the Christian Saint Barbara
Region/Culture: Central and Eastern Europe
Mythos: Georgian Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: Barbale holds the fertility of women and cows in her keeping, heals the sick, and each midwinter is set against Nishkha, the dragon of the sky, in a contest of light with darkness.
Role in Mythos: She is the female sun of Georgian folk religion, honoured at the winter solstice feast of Barbaroba, which the old calendar seems to have treated as the start of the year.
Relation to Humans: Households pray to her for children, healthy cattle and the recovery of the sick, and feed her with milk porridge, cheese bread and loaves filled with beans and walnuts. Mothers nursing a child through smallpox or measles call on her as the aunt of the spirits that brought the disease.

The loaves come out of the oven round, each one marked on top with a cross, and when they are broken open the steam smells of beans and crushed walnut. In Lechkhumi, in the hills of western Georgia, these were the Barbale loaves, baked once a year in the dead of winter. Farther up, in Svaneti, the same day called for milk porridge and cheese bread. Every one of these foods is circular, and that was the point.

The feast is Barbaroba, kept on the fourth to the sixth of December by the old calendar, the seventeenth by the new. On paper it belongs to Saint Barbara, the martyr of the eastern church whom Georgians honoured chiefly as a healer and protector of the sick. Underneath the saint stands someone older. Georgians in several regions worshipped a sun deity of the same name: Barbale in the lowlands, Barbol or Barblash among the Svans, and Barbar-Babar in the older invocations. The saint arrived, found the name already in use, and moved in.

Barbale is the sun, and she is a woman. That alone sets Georgia apart from many of its neighbours. In Georgian folk poetry the sun is always female and the moon male, and the two are called mother and son, sister and brother, or wife and husband depending on who is singing. Barbale is the form of that sun that people prayed to, and her concerns are close to home: the fertility of women, the fertility of cows, and the motherly side of nature in general. Among the Svans she is remembered more simply still, as a power of fertility and a healer of illness.

She has no portrait. Nobody describes her hair, her dress or her height, and no carving is said to show her. What stands for her are rings. Hoops made of iron or bent from green branches, spindle whorls, wreaths and crowns all belonged to her, and all are small household copies of a disc that rolls across the sky. The round pies on the feast-day table say the same thing in dough.

Barbaroba fell at the winter solstice, when the sun is weakest and the nights longest, and the custom carries the memory of a fight. On one side stands Barbale. On the other stands Nishkha, the dragon of the sky. Light against dark, with the year hanging on the result. The details of the combat have not survived, only the pairing and the season. It was a new year feast, one of the oldest the Georgians had, and Barbale’s month looks to have been the first month of the old calendar. Its most important rite was first-footing: the first visitor to cross a threshold that day carried the household’s luck for the coming year on their back, and families took care over who it would be.

The same goddess appears at a sickbed. When smallpox or measles came into a house, Georgians did not speak of infection. They spoke of the batonebi, the lords, a band of sibling spirits who had come to stay and had to be entertained until they chose to leave. The room was hung with bright cloth, voices were kept low and sweet, and a woman sat by the child singing the lullaby Iavnana with a carpet spread out for the invisible guests. One line of that song calls on the aunt of the lords. The aunt is Barbare, the father’s sister, or in some tellings their mother, and she is the one to ask when the child gets worse. The sun sends the lords, and the sun’s gentler namesake talks them into going home. If things turned desperate, a sheep or a rooster was killed at a shrine in the patient’s place.

Nearly all of this reaches print through one scholar. Vera Bardavelidze, a Georgian ethnographer, recorded the Svan feast calendar in the 1930s and in 1941 published a study arguing that Saint Barbara’s Georgian feast preserved a pre-Christian sun goddess, Barbar-Babar. The rites, the foods and the invocations are things she and others collected on the ground. The goddess assembled out of them is her reading. It became the standard one, and the national encyclopedia repeats it, but it has limits that the same reference work admits. Dig in Georgian soil and the old fertility figure that turns up is male. No female sun deity appears in the archaeological record at all. The solar woman lives in the songs and the customs, not in the ground.

Nor does anyone say where she came from. She has no birth story, no parents and no husband under this name, and she is sometimes folded into Lamaria, the Svan protector of women who wears the Virgin Mary’s name much as Barbale wears Saint Barbara’s.

Her powers are those of the winter sun. She returns after the longest night, and with her come milk, calves, children and the mending of the sick. She can be bargained with through food, song and good manners, which is more than can be said for most forces that decide whether a village eats.

Her limits are as plain. She is at her weakest on her own feast day, when the dragon has the upper hand and the people must help her along with fire-coloured bread and a well-chosen guest at the door. She heals, but she is not the one who decides who falls ill. And she has kept her feast only by sharing it. Georgians still bake bean bread on the seventeenth of December, and most of them will say they do it for the saint.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Barbale in Georgian mythology?

Barbale is the female sun deity of Georgian folk religion and the protector of the fertility of women and cattle. She is also prayed to as a healer of the sick. Her name and her feast merged with those of the Christian Saint Barbara.

What is Barbaroba?

Barbaroba is the Georgian feast of Saint Barbara, kept on 4 to 6 December in the old calendar and 17 December in the new. It was a winter solstice and new year festival that also honoured the sun goddess Barbale. Its main customs are first-footing and the baking of round breads and pies.

Why do Georgians bake bean bread on Saint Barbara’s day?

Round foods were offered to Barbale because circular objects stood for the sun. In Lechkhumi the offering was a cross-marked loaf filled with beans and walnuts, and in Svaneti it was milk porridge and cheese bread. Bean bread is still baked in Georgia on 17 December.

What does Barbale look like?

No Georgian source describes Barbale’s appearance. She is represented by round objects such as iron hoops, rings of green branches, spindle whorls, wreaths and crowns, all of which stand for the disc of the sun.

Is Barbale an ancient goddess or a modern reconstruction?

The rites, foods and prayers of Barbaroba are genuine folk customs recorded in Svaneti and other regions. The picture of Barbale as a pre-Christian sun goddess was put together from them by the ethnographer Vera Bardavelidze, chiefly in a study published in 1941. No female sun deity appears in Georgian archaeological finds.