Alkarısı

The spirit that haunts the woman in childbed is known, in İnan's words, from the Great Wall of China to the Mediterranean shores: Al karısı and Albastı in the west, Albastı across Central Asia, Albıs in Tuva, Almış in the Altai, Abası among the Yakut.[1] In the Kazakh telling she is a frightening long-haired woman who throws her breasts back over her shoulders. In Anatolia she is mostly an old and ugly witch in a red shirt, though beautiful ones exist; to İnan she is at bottom a yellow-haired girl.[1][2]

"This spirit haunts women in childbed, takes their liver and carries it off to throw into the water." If she reaches the water, the mother dies. In Kazakh and Kyrgyz stories the organ is usually the lungs; Turkish ciğer covers both.[1][4] She is of two kinds: the Kara Albastı is grave and serious and fears only the ocaklı; the Sarı Albastı is flighty and cunning and flees a hoca's reading.[1] At night she takes the horses from the stable, rides them till dawn and braids their manes.[1]

What keeps her off: iron, gunfire, fire, the colour red and the ocaklı. A red ribbon is tied on the mother's head, a knife or a needle goes under her pillow, and she is not left alone for forty days.[1][2] Those who catch her pierce her with a needle, turn her into human shape and keep her in their service for years; such houses are called ocak, their people ocaklı.[2] In the Altai's own record the albıs is only a spirit of grave illness under Erlik's sons; there is no childbed in it.[3]