Djall

Also Known As: definite djalli, plural djaj; also called dreq, shejtan and satan
Region/Culture: Central and Eastern Europe
Mythos: Albanian
Primary Type/Nature: Demons and Devils
Mythical Attributes: He is blamed for fires that start on their own, for lights that lead night travellers off a known path, and for the ordinary malice that ruins a household from inside it.
Role in Mythos: He is a working explanation rather than a story character, invoked to account for accidents and ill will, and he barely appears in the tale collections at all.
Relation to Humans: The danger he poses is to people caught out after dark and to livestock left unguarded, which is why highlanders hung charms on their children, their cattle and their horses. A few people were said to have gone to him deliberately and struck a bargain, and their neighbours kept well clear of them.

On a night track in the north Albanian mountains, small fires appear and start to move. They dash about, bright and low and quick, and a traveller who has walked that path a hundred times finds that he cannot find it. Edith Durham was told this in 1908 and set it down in High Albania. The devils come out as fiery sparks, the way closes, and nothing can be done until the first cock crows about two hours after midnight, at which point they lose their power and are gone.

That is close to the whole of what the devil looks like in the Albanian record. Djall is simply the Albanian word for the devil, and it arrived from Rome. Vladimir Orel’s Albanian Etymological Dictionary takes it back to Latin diabolus, which Latin had in turn from Greek diabolos, the slanderer. Its everyday synonym dreq came off a different Latin word, draco, the dragon. So did dragua, the winged champion who defends the villages against the kulshedra. Rome handed Albanian the same dragon twice over and the language made a devil out of one copy and a hero out of the other. Albanian also uses shejtan and satan for the same figure, and in Gheg the plural djemën carries the sense of demons.

Ask what he is made of and the sources go quiet in a way that is more interesting than an answer. Nobody writes down a face, a height, a hide or a pair of horns. What gets written down is fire, and even then not the fire of a burning giant striding through a valley. Alexander Novik, who has spent years recording Albanian speech and belief in southeastern Albania and in the Albanian villages of the Azov Sea coast, notes that belief in a demon of fire is strong and specific. When something went up, the old people said Dîl ndezkan, the devils set it on fire, or D’allî a ndezi lle ndezet, the devil set it on fire and now he is burning himself.

A barn goes up before dawn. The straw takes first and then the roof timbers, and by the time the household is out in the yard with the smell of it already in their clothes there is nothing to do but stand and watch and say the thing that gets said. The devils lit it. And whichever one lit it is in there now, burning along with the crop.

The same fieldwork turns up a devil with a body after all, though a modest one. D’all ma lesh, the shaggy devil, is what Albanian speakers in those villages call a being their Slavic neighbours would put in a forest or a bog. Theirs does not live outdoors. He lives in the house, up in the garret, or in the outbuilding where the straw and the harvest are kept, which is a colder thought than a monster on a mountainside.

The best story the collections give him is not really his. In The Stirrup Moor, taken down by Holger Pedersen in 1895 and later reprinted in Folklor shqiptar, a king has his own son blinded over a game and the boy is thrown into a ravine for the birds. He climbs an oak to keep their beaks off him, and below him, at a spring, the devils gather to give account of the day’s work. Their chief hears each of them in turn. One says he possessed the king and made him put out his son’s eyes, and is promoted to officer for it. One says he went up into the high pasture and urinated on a shepherd’s flock so that every sheep will sicken and die, and is promoted as well. The third admits he managed nothing at all, and while his chief is beating him he sobs out the one thing he should have kept behind his teeth: how is the king’s son supposed to know that sand and water from this spring would give him back his sight, and how is the shepherd to know the same water would save his flock? Then a cock crows and the spring is empty. The blind boy climbs down, gropes his way to the sound of the water, and washes his eyes clear.

That is one tale. In Robert Elsie’s selection of Albanian folktales and legends, gathered from across the tradition, the devils turn up in that story and nowhere else in the book, while the word kulshedra falls on the page more than ninety times. The record is thinner than the reputation. Albanian storytelling already had its monster, a many headed serpent with fire of her own, and she took up the room a devil might otherwise have had. Djall is the word people reached for, not the figure they sat up telling stories about.

What he could do was mostly done to people who were travelling or asleep, and to animals. Durham’s highlanders hung blue glass beads on their horses’ halters, tied a coin to a child’s forehead, and carried triangular amulet cases holding whatever Latin the priest could be persuaded to write out; the same cases went on the horns of cattle and into the manes of horses so the animals would not be spirit ridden in the night. At Djakova, as she spells it, there was a stronger remedy. Kill a snake and take its head off with silver, and the sharpened edge of a large coin will serve; dry the head, wrap it with a silver medal of Saint George, have a priest bless it, and wear it. Without safeguards of that kind, she was given to understand, it would be hard to live in the land.

Some people went to him on purpose. Nikaj, she was told, swarmed with devils, and a great many of its women had dealings with them. A Muslim magician came through the parish while she was staying there and had the nerve to ask the Franciscan for a bed, which went about as well as expected. He was known to have sold his soul, and to summon his help by standing on one leg and kicking the other out behind him until the sweat ran off him and he was spent, after which he read fortunes. Durham suspected an impostor and would have liked to watch. Nobody would let her anywhere near him. With the Devil, she was told, nothing is impossible.

His limits are the limits of the dark. A rooster settles it, in Durham’s mountains and at Pedersen’s spring alike, and daylight is not even required, only the bird. Silver and a blessing keep him off a child or a cow. And in the one story where he has anything like a plan, he loses because he cannot stop talking, since the failure gets beaten, the beaten one complains, and the complaint hands a blinded boy his eyes back. There is no drought in any of this, no wildfire running up a valley, no wounds that refuse to close. There is a barn alight before dawn, sparks on a footpath, something shaggy in the straw store, and a committee of devils at a spring being asked what they got done today.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who or what is Djall in Albanian folklore?

Djall is the Albanian word for the devil, and in folk belief he is an explanation more than a character. He is blamed for fires that start by themselves, for lights that lead night travellers off a path they know well, and for harm done to livestock and households. Albanian also calls the same figure dreq, shejtan and satan.

Is Djall really a fire demon?

The fire connection is real but much smaller than it sounds. Alexander Novik records that when something caught alight, older Albanian speakers said the devils had set it on fire and that the devil who lit it was now burning in it himself, and Edith Durham was told that devils appear at night as small fiery sparks that make a traveller lose his way. No source describes him as a burning giant, and none credits him with drought or wildfire.

What is the difference between Djall and Dreq?

They are two words for the same figure, and the difference is in where the words came from rather than in what they mean. Vladimir Orel’s Albanian Etymological Dictionary derives djall from Latin diabolus and dreq from Latin draco, the word for a dragon. The same Latin dragon also gave Albanian dragua, the winged protector who fights the kulshedra.

How did Albanians protect themselves from him?

Edith Durham recorded blue glass beads on horses’ halters, a coin tied to a child’s forehead, and triangular amulet cases holding Latin texts written out by a priest, fastened to the horns of cattle and the manes of horses so the animals would not be spirit ridden at night. Around Djakova she was given a stronger charm: a snake’s head cut off with silver, dried, wrapped with a silver medal of Saint George and blessed by a priest. In the stories, the first cock crow after midnight ends his power outright.

Does Djall appear in Albanian folktales?

Rarely. In Robert Elsie’s selection of Albanian folktales and legends the devils appear in a single story, The Stirrup Moor, collected by Holger Pedersen in 1895, in which a band of them meet at a spring to report the day’s mischief and are overheard by a blinded prince. The kulshedra, by contrast, is named on page after page of the same collection.