Ol — recorded in the Yaghnob valley also as Xol and cognate with the Central Asian Al, Albasti and Almasti — is the demoness of childbirth, a malevolent female being who preys on women in labour and on the newborn, and to whom deaths in and after childbed are attributed. She is fended off by iron placed about the bed, by garlic and rue, by watchfulness through the perilous forty days, and above all by keeping her from water, to which she is drawn. Sources differ on whether Ol names a single demoness or a whole class of birth-spirits, folk usage treating the being at once as a species and as an individuated adversary of the mother.