Gello

In mythology, Gello, also Gyllou, Gylou, or Gillo, is a female demon or revenant who threatens the reproductive cycle by causing infertility, spontaneous abortion, and infant mortality. By the Byzantine era, the gello (Greek: γελλώ; plural γελλούδες gelloudes) had become a type of demonic possession rather than an individual being. Women might be tried for being gelloudes or subjected to exorcism.

The names of Gello

Aramaic inscriptional evidence of a child-snatching demon appears on a silver lamella (metal-leaf sheet) from Palestine and two incantation bowls dating to the 5th or 6th century; on these she is called Sideros (Greek for iron, a traditional protection for women during childbirth). Under various names, she continues to appear in medieval Christian manuscripts written in Greek, Coptic, Ethiopian, Armenian, Romanian, Slavonic, Syriac, Arabic, and Hebrew. In literary texts and on amulets, the demon's adversaries are Solomon, saints, or angels.

Knowledge of a demon's name was required to control or compel it; a demon could act under an alias. Redundant naming is characteristic of magic charms, "stressing," as A.A. Barb noted in his classic essay "Antaura," "the well-known magic rule that the omission of a single one can give the demons a loophole through which they can work their harm."