Dali

Also Known As: Svan Dæl, also Daal; Georgian დალი; her Mingrelian counterpart is Tkashi-Mapa, “Queen of the Woods”
Region/Culture: Central and Eastern Europe
Mythos: Georgian Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: She owns and pastures the hoofed game of the high Caucasus, changes shape into her own animals, and carries hair of gold that is at once her weapon and the one thing that can undo her.
Role in Mythos: She decides which hunters eat and which hunters fall, rationing the mountain’s game and punishing anyone who takes more than his share or climbs to her carrying any kind of impurity.
Relation to Humans: Hunters courted her with prayer, sacrificial bread and a long list of abstentions, and those who kept faith were promised as much game as their families needed. She also took individual men as lovers, which brought them unfailing success and, more often than not, killed them.

Before dawn on the high ridges of Svaneti the air is thin enough to hurt, and the men who climbed into it were taught to watch for one particular light. When the morning star came up, the ground above them belonged to somebody. Past the last scrub, in the crags where the tur go, a woman sat on a ledge combing hair the colour of a struck match, and whether a hunter came home that evening depended almost entirely on what she made of him.

Dali kept the hoofed animals of the mountain the way a shepherd keeps a flock. Deer, ibex, wild sheep, chamois, the great curl-horned tur: they were hers, counted and known, and she watched them from a cavern set high above the villages. Some tellings put the cave on the flank of a glacier, some at the summit, some behind a rock door she opened and closed to keep the place hidden. In Svaneti the address usually given is Ushba, the twin-peaked monster whose iced south face people called Dalis panjara, the Window of Dali. Occasionally, and much more strangely, she and her herd lived inside a hollowed-out spruce.

Her beauty was reported as irresistible and terrible at the same time, enough to unhinge a man who only spoke to her. Her skin did not merely look pale, it gave off light, and if she wore clothes at all they were white. The hair was the centre of everything. It was gold-coloured, in some accounts actually gold and bright as the sun, and a few tellings have her leaving little tongues of flame behind her as she moved. She could change her size as readily as her shape. In eastern Georgia hunters left tiny pairs of shoes on the cliffs for her; among her herd she might appear as an ibex half again the size of any real animal. When she went in animal form she marked herself, with a coat of pure white, an odd blaze, or horns of gold.

On an ordinary morning she milked them. A hunter starting up the scree in the dark would set down a round of ceremonial bread called lamsir, still warm from the hearth, say his prayer over it and start climbing, and if he had done everything properly he would find game and she would let him take it.

Everything properly covered a great deal. Dali was held to be violently sensitive to any pollution entering her mountains. A hunter abstained from his wife the night before. He kept away from any woman menstruating or in childbirth, avoided corpses, and watched his language. In some districts the wives of hunters were forbidden to wash, comb or unplait their own hair while their men were on the mountain, which sets wife and goddess in an odd correspondence. There was also a quota. A party took no more beasts than it could carry down, usually one for each man. Afterwards the hunters owed her organ meat, and in places the horns were consecrated to her once they were back in the village. Keep all of it and your family ate. Break it and the penalties ran from an empty day to a fatal fall.

The affairs began at her initiative, not the hunter’s, and her target was often a man who had done her some small service. She gave tokens, a bead, a ring, once a pair of scissors, all to be hidden from everybody. In return he was to touch no mortal woman and tell no one why his luck had turned. The condition of a man in her favour had its own word, dalelukdune, Dali-possessed, and it presented as a sort of lovesick derangement, the afflicted wandering the wilderness waiting to be found. A cool head could still bargain. Terms set before the affair began were terms she honoured, including an end date and leave to marry later. Some traditions held that a hunter could pass the whole arrangement to a male houseguest by giving him his undergarments, after which the goddess’s attention transferred. Svan hospitality had range.

The best-known of these affairs ended on a cliff. Betkil kept faith for a while and his hunts never failed. Then he went with a mortal woman, most often his wife, occasionally his sister-in-law, and she took the goddess’s token. Dali put on the shape of a white deer and drew him out of his village and up her mountain, and behind him the path melted, crumbled, closed. At the top she stood in her own body again and asked him about the token. Then the ledge went, and Betkil hung by one hand and one foot over a very long drop while she walked away. In some versions his hound Q’ursha is up there with him and offers to be eaten. In others the village arrives with ropes and the mountain simply grows until the ropes cannot reach. He falls either way. The story is danced: round-dance songs called Bail Betkil, Betkan Kutsa and Betkani were performed each year at the foot of the cliff where he was supposed to have died, on the third Sunday after Easter, and attached to a rite for bringing rain.

Where she came from is not settled and probably cannot be. Her name has been traced to Georgian dila, morning, and to Ossetian dælimon, demon, and both readings are contested. Kevin Tuite set it beside the Nakh words for god, Chechen dēla, Ingush dǣlə, Bats dalě, and proposed that a taboo on speaking sacred names had swapped out her original Svan name for a borrowed one, which would leave the deity most closely identified with the Svan known by a word from over the mountains. The record itself is thin and late. Vera Bardavelidze collected in the 1930s, Elene Virsaladze from the 1950s onward, and Tuite regards the surviving ballads as a tiny fraction of what once circulated, nearly all of it performed and probably composed by men, which leaves what Svan women made of her almost entirely unrecorded.

She gives birth twice in the songs that survive. In Dælil k’ojas khelghwazhale, Dali is Giving Birth on the Crags, a hunter named Mepsay hears her crying out above him, and when the newborn drops down the rock face and a wolf takes it, he shoots the wolf and carries the child back up. She offers him a choice of payment: a mountain goat every day, nine turs come September, or her bed. He picks the turs. Later he shoots at an ibex with golden horns, and the bullet comes off the horn and kills him. Nobody is ever told whose child it was or what became of it. The second birth is Amirani’s, the chained Georgian hero. A hunter takes her as a lover, his wife finds them and cuts the golden hair away, which either kills Dali outright or forces her from the world, and the child is cut out of her. He is premature, so he finishes gestating in the belly of a bull before being left beside a spring to be found and baptised. His mother’s last word on him is that he will be a great hero, but less of one than he would have been.

What she could do followed from what she was. She moved between her own body and her animals’ at will. She healed a man’s wounds with a touch and, in the story of the hunter called White Mangur, came down out of the crags to kill the nine enemies who had inflicted them, using an ash branch. She sent an avalanche onto the town of Nakvderi over a single wounded tur. She came close to flooding the Inguri and was talked out of it with sacred bread. Her hair was strong enough to string a bow and strong enough to strangle the man who stole a strand to do it.

The hair was also the flaw. Cut it and she dies or is banished, which is exactly how a wronged wife ends an affair, and a woman whose husband had been too long on the mountain might cut her own hair instead and pray for God to cut Dali’s, forcing him home. Gentler versions have a mother or a wife creep up on the sleeping goddess and wash the hair, sometimes in deer’s milk, after which Dali is either too weakened or too grateful to do anything but serve her. Christianity took the rest. Saint George absorbed her office, and in the song of the hunter Chorla he threatens to foul her mountains with storms and landslides until she releases a man who had killed past his quota, which she does. In later ballads she is not even singular, only the Dalis, a set of spirits who call George master. Virsaladze traced her further down still, into the ali, a thing with its limbs on backwards and its hair fouled with blood. She did not go quietly. Researchers in 2013 found younger and better-educated Georgians filing her under mythology while old hunters spoke of men they had known who met her and came back injured or mad. In 2019 the town of Lentekhi cut her statue from the design of a new fountain after the local metropolitan objected to the idolatry, and built it with the three ibexes and no goddess.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Dali in Georgian mythology?

Dali is the hunting goddess of the Svan people of the high Caucasus, the owner and protector of hoofed wild game such as ibex, tur, chamois and deer. She lives in a cave high in the mountains, often placed on the twin-peaked Ushba, and decides which hunters find game and which do not. Other western Georgian groups had equivalent figures, most notably the Mingrelian Tkashi-Mapa.

What happens in the story of Dali and Betkil?

Betkil is a hunter who becomes Dali’s lover and is given unfailing success on condition that he touch no mortal woman. He breaks the vow, and the woman takes Dali’s love token, so the goddess turns into a white deer and lures him high onto her mountain while the path behind him crumbles away. The ledge collapses under him and he is left hanging by one hand and one foot before falling to his death. The story is preserved in Svan round-dance songs including Bail Betkil and Betkani.

Is Dali the mother of Amirani?

Yes. In the most widespread version, Dali takes a hunter as a lover and his wife discovers them and cuts off the goddess’s golden hair, which either kills Dali or drives her out of the world. The child is cut from her body prematurely and finishes gestating inside a bull before being left at a spring and baptised Amirani. Dali declares before she goes that he will be a great hero, though weaker than he would have been if carried to term.

What rules did hunters have to follow to stay in Dali’s favour?

Hunters had to arrive on her mountain ritually pure, which meant abstaining from their wives the night before, avoiding any woman who was menstruating or in childbirth, keeping away from corpses and avoiding foul language. They offered her a ceremonial bread called lamsir before the hunt and organ meat afterwards, and in some places consecrated the animal’s horns to her back in the village. They were also held to a strict quota, usually no more than one animal per man, and killing beyond it brought avalanches, ruined luck or death.

How can Dali be overcome?

Her hair is her weak point. Cutting it kills her or banishes her from the world, and several stories turn on a hunter’s wife doing exactly that; in gentler variants a woman washes the sleeping goddess’s hair, sometimes in deer’s milk, and Dali becomes her servant. After Christianity spread through Georgia, Saint George was also said to be able to overrule her and force her to release hunters she had trapped.