Betkil

Betkil is the doomed hunter of one of the most famous of Svan ballads and dances, a mortal chosen by the huntress-goddess Dæl. She gives him her token, a bead or charm, and grants him unfailing success in the hunt on the sole condition that he keep faith with her and shun the touch of mortal women, his own wife included. When at a festival he breaks her prohibition, the goddess withdraws her favour and lures him onto a high pinnacle of rock; the mountain rises around him, the way down vanishes, and after his kin fail to reach him he casts himself, or falls, to his death. The Betkil ballad is still sung and danced in Svaneti and stands as the type-case of Dæl's fatal love for the hunters she chooses.

Domains

• the hunt

Powers

• hunts upon the high crags

Relations

• lover: DælChosen and loved by the goddess, ruined for breaking faith with her.Tuite, Kevin (2006), 'The meaning of Dæl', Munich: LINCOM (secondary)

Sources

• Betkil is the hunter-hero of a celebrated Svan ballad who becomes the lover of the goddess Dæl and, after betraying her demand for fidelity, is stranded on a cliff and falls to his death.: Tuite, Kevin (2006), 'The meaning of Dæl: Symbolic and spatial associations of the South Caucasian goddess of game animals', Munich: LINCOM (secondary); Svan ballad of Betkil, in Virsaladze, Elene (1976), Gruzinskij oxotnichij mif i poezija, Moscow: Nauka (primary)