Ýel Baba, the 'Wind-Elder', is the master of the winds in Turkmen and wider Turkic folk belief. He is imagined as a tutelary lord who governs the gales of the steppe and desert: angered, he raises devastating storms; propitiated, he sends a favouring breeze. In Turkmen tale he aids heroes by carrying them aloft on the wind. He belongs to the class of elemental patron-spirits (eýe) that populate Turkmen cosmology alongside the pirs of rain, farming, and herds.