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An ala or hala (plural: ale or hali)
is a mythological creature recorded in the folklore of Bulgarians, Macedonians, and Serbs. Ale are considered demons of bad weather whose main purpose is to lead hail-producing thunderclouds in the direction
of fields, vineyards, or orchards to destroy the crops, or loot and take them
away. Extremely voracious, ale particularly like to eat children, though their
gluttony is not limited to Earth. It is believed they can try to devour the Sun
or the Moon causing eclipses; her
success would mean the end of the world. When people encounter an ala, their
mental or physical health, or even life, are in peril; however, her favor can be
gained by approaching her with respect and trust. Being in a good relationship
with an ala is very beneficial: she makes her favorites rich and saves their
lives in times of trouble.
The appearance of ale is quite diversely and often vaguely described in
folkloric sources. A given ala may look like a black wind, a gigantic creature
of indistinct form, a huge-mouthed, humanlike, or snakelike monster, a female dragon, a raven,
etc. By certain descriptions, ale can in fact assume various human or animal shapes, and can
even possess a
person’s body. This diversity is probably because the ala is a synthesis of a
Slavic demon of bad weather and a similar demon of the central Balkans pre-Slavic population.
In folk
tales with a humanlike ala, her personality is strikingly similar to that of the
Russian Baba Yaga. Ale are said
to live in the clouds, or in a lake, spring, hidden remote place, forest,
inhospitable mountain, cave, or gigantic tree. While ale
are frequently an enemy to humans, they have powerful enemies who can defeat
them, principally dragons. In Christianized tales, St. Elijah
takes the dragons’ role; however, there are beliefs in which the saint and the
dragons fight ale together. Eagles are also regarded as defenders
against ale, chasing them away from fields and thus preventing them from
bringing hail clouds overhead. The demon’s name in the standard Serbian, ala, comes from dialects which
lost the velar
fricative, while hala is recorded in a Serbian dialect which has
retained this sound and in Bulgarian. For this reason, it is believed that the
original name had an initial h-sound, a fact that has led Serbian scholar
Ljubinko Radenković to reject the etymology given by several dictionaries,
including that of the Serbian Academy of Sciences
and Arts, by which the demon’s name comes from the Turkish word ‘ala’
(snake) as that word lacks the h-sound.[4] The name may
instead stem from the Greek word for hail, χάλαζα (pronounced [ˈxalaza]; transliterated chalaza). This
etymology is proposed by Bulgarian scholar Ivanichka Georgieva, and supported by
Bulgarian scholar Rachko Popov and Serbian
scholars Slobodan Zečević, and Sreten
Petrović. According
to Serbian scholar Marta Bjeletić, ala and hala stem from the noun
*xala
in Proto-South-Slavic, the dialect of Proto-Slavic from which South Slavic
languages emerged (x in xala represents the voiceless velar fricative). That noun
was derived from the Proto-Slavic root *xal-, denoting the fury of the
elements.
Dragon or Serpent like demon connected
with the wind, and thunderstorm and hail clouds. It was believed in the Gruža region of
central Serbia that the ala is invisible, but
that she can be heard — her powerful hissing resonated in front of the dark hail
clouds.
In Bulgaria, farmers saw a
horrible ala with huge wings and sword-like thick tail in the contours of a dark
cloud. When an ala–cloud overtook the village, villagers peered into the sky
hoping to see an imperial eagle emerging there. They
believed that the mighty bird with a cross on its back could banish the
ala–cloud from the fields. In eastern
Bulgaria, ala appeared not in clouds, but in gales and whirlwinds. In other
regions of Bulgaria, the ala was seen either as a "bull with huge horns, a black
cloud, dark fog or a snake-like monster with six wings and twelve tails". The
ala is thought to inhabit remote mountain areas or caves, in which she keeps bad
weather. In Bulgarian tradition, thunderstorms and hail clouds were interpreted
as a battle between the good dragon or eagle and the evil ala.
Serbs in Kosovo believed that the ala
lowers her tail to the ground and hides her head in the clouds. Anyone who saw
her head became instantly insane. In a high relief carved above a window of the
Visoki Dečani monastery’s church,
an eagle clutches a snakelike ala while an eaglet looks on. According to a description from eastern Serbia, the ala is a very large creature
with a snake’s body and a horse’s head. A very common opinion is that the ala is
the sister of the dragon, and looks more
or less like him. In a spell from
eastern Serbia, the ala is described as a three-headed snake:
By a description recorded in the Boljevac region, the ala is a black and horrible
creature in the form of wind. Similarly, in the Homolje region of eastern Serbia, the people imagine
the ala as a black wind moving over the land. Wherever she goes, a whirlwind blows, turning like a
drill, and those who get exposed to the whirlwind go mad. In Bulgaria too, the
ala is a violent wind that sweeps up everything in its way and brings havoc:
A belief from the Leskovac region
states the ala is a monster with an enormous mouth who holds in her hand a big
wooden spoon, with which she grabs and devours everything that gets in her way.
One story has it that a man kept such an ala in his barn; she drank thirty
liters of milk every day. Another warns that ale in the form of twelve ravens
used to take the crops from vineyards.
In eastern Serbia it was believed that ale who interact with people can metamorphose into humans or
animals, after which their true selves can be seen only by so-called
šestaci – men with six fingers on both hands and six toes on both feet –
though human-looking ale cause houses to shake when they enter. By a
belief recorded in the Homolje region, ale that charge to the Moon also display shapeshifting abilities: they repeatedly
shift from their basic shape of two-headed snakes to six-fingered men who hold
iron pitchforks, black young bulls, big boars, or black wolves, and back.
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