Gaila

Also Known As: written Gajła in the Polish spelling of the one book that records it; also Gajla
Region/Culture: Northern Europe
Mythos: Lithuanian Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Fairy Folk and Spirit Beings
Mythical Attributes: Gaila is a hag, one of a kind of female monsters said to torment people and cattle.
Role in Mythos: She fills a single short entry in Teodor Narbutt’s 1835 catalogue of Lithuanian gods and spirits, and no myth is told about her.
Relation to Humans: Gaila harms people and their livestock, and that is all the record says of her dealings with them. No charm, offering or protection against her is written down.

A farmer finds a cow sweating and trembling in a cold byre at dawn, and the household needs a name for what was in there with it. In Lithuania, by one account, the name was Gaila.

That account is a single paragraph. It sits on page 80 of the first volume of Teodor Narbutt’s history of the ancient Lithuanian nation, a volume given over to mythology and printed in Polish at Vilnius in 1835. Under the heading Gajła he gives one word, the Polish for a hag. Then one sentence: among the evil beings there were certain female monsters that tormented people and cattle, according to the tales of the common folk. That is the whole of it.

He adds three props. A footnote says the old dictionary of Konstantinas Sirvydas gives Gajła as the Lithuanian word for a hag, with the Latin lamia beside it. A second note borrows from the French mythographer Noël, who lists under a similar-sounding name a forest demon of the Arabs that kills people and animals. A third guesses that the being another writer, Ksawery Bohusz, had called Magilla, goddess of wrath, was a creature of the same sort.

None of this holds much weight. The first edition of Sirvydas’s dictionary, from about 1620, translates the Polish word for a hag with ragana, the ordinary Lithuanian witch, and has no Gaila in that place. Narbutt was working from a later printing, and his page reference has not been confirmed here. The Arab demon is a resemblance of sound and nothing more. In everyday Lithuanian, gaila simply means pity or regret.

So the picture stays dim. Gaila has no story, no home, no parents and no end. Nobody is recorded meeting her, and no collector after Narbutt brought back a tale under her name. He is also a difficult witness. His catalogue runs to dozens of gods and spirits, a good number of which appear nowhere before him, and later scholars of Baltic religion have treated the book with open suspicion.

What surrounds her is far better known. Lithuanian country belief had its ragana, the witch who spoils milk and rides at night, and its laumė, the spirit woman who can smother a sleeper. Across the border the Latvians feared the lietuvēns, which presses on people and animals in the dark until they are slick with sweat and half dead by morning. A hag that torments people and cattle would be at home in that company. The one page that names Gaila never says whether she was one of them under another name, or something of her own.

Her power, as written, is to torment, and her victims are humans and livestock alike. Her limits are unrecorded. She is a name, a category and a single sentence in a book whose author was not always careful.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Gaila in Lithuanian mythology?

Gaila is a hag-like evil being recorded in one 1835 book on Lithuanian mythology by Teodor Narbutt. He describes her kind as female monsters that tormented people and cattle. No myth or folktale about Gaila is known.

Where does the name Gaila come from?

The name comes from Teodor Narbutt, who spelled it Gajła in Polish. Narbutt claimed that an old Lithuanian dictionary by Konstantinas Sirvydas gave it as the word for a hag. In ordinary Lithuanian, gaila means pity or regret.

Is Gaila a genuine figure of Lithuanian folklore?

Gaila rests on a single source, and that source is doubted. Teodor Narbutt’s 1835 catalogue contains many gods and spirits found nowhere earlier, and no later collector recorded a tale about Gaila. The first edition of Sirvydas’s dictionary translates the word for a hag as ragana and does not give Gaila there.

What does Gaila do to people?

Gaila torments people and cattle, according to the one sentence written about her. The record does not say how she does it, when she comes, or how anyone can be protected from her.