The Fisherwife of Palermo

The Fisherwife of Palermo, (d. after 1588), was an unamed Italian woman and an alleged witch put on trial for witch craft by the Sicilian Inquisition in Palermo in Sicily. She claimed to associate with fairys, and her confession was among the first that describes the belief in the contacts between elfs and humans on Sicily, something which was to become common in the witch trials of Sicily in the 17th century.

The trial

In 1588, a woman, the wife of a poor fisherman, was brought before the Inquisition in Palermo accused of witchcraft after claiming to associate with the Elfs. Her case was among the first of many witch trials in Sicily associated with the Elfs, and her confession was typical for the "Elf's cases". She told them, that when she was a child, she had flown through the air with a group of women to a vast field on the mainland of the Kingdom of Naples. On the field, a red-coloured teenage boy and a beautiful woman sat on a throne. They where called the King and the Queen. The leader of the women who took her there, who was called the ensign, told her that if she fell to her knees in front of the King and Queen of the elves and gave them allegiance, they would give her riches, beauty and beautiful men. she also added, that she should not mention the Virgin Mary, as it was bad manners to do so in the presence of the Elves. She agreed to worship the king as a God and the Queen as a Goddess, and swore her allegiance on a book with big numbers held for her by the ensign. She worshiped the Divine couple on the throne. Thereafter they had eaten, drank, and had intercourse. She herself had sex with multiple men in a short period of time. Thereafter, she had awoken as if from a dream. On some occasions, however, they had fetched her before she had gone to sleep for the night to prevent her husband and children from noticing anything. She, however, was awake the whole time.

She told the Inquistion, that she had not known that it was sinful before the priest had told her that it was Satan and that she would have to stop, but that she had continued with it anyway, because it had made her so happy. Also, the Divine couple had given her medicine to cure the sick, so she could earn money and alleviate her financial destitution.

It does not seem that the Inquisition punished her very harshly; they did not take the fairies seriously, and it seems as if they let her go by accepting her excuse that it may all have been a dream.

The Fairies of Sicily

On Sicily, there was a belief that the elves or fairies would make contact with humans, mostly women, whom they took to Benevento, the Blockula of Sicily. The fairies where called "donas de fuera", which was also a name for the women who associated with them. The fairies where described as beauties dressed in white, red or black; they could be male or female, and their feet were the paws of cats, horses or of a peculiar "round" shape. They came in groups of five or seven, and a male fairy played the lute or the guitar while dancing. The fairies and the humans were divided into companies in different sizes, (different ones for noble and non-noble humans) under the lead of an ensign.

Every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, the fairies met the humans belonging to their company in the woods. In March, several companies gathered, and their "Prince" instructed them to be benevolent creatures. A congregation called "The Seven Fairies" could transform themselves to cats and something called "aydon"; ayodons where able to kill.

The fairies could easily be offended by humans. In one story, a man who was not associated with the fairies and was unable to see them developed a painful cramp after hitting one of the fairies who was listening to him play music. Another story involves several people who had disturbed the fairies while they nocturnally traveled from house to house, eating and drinking as they routinely embraced the town's infants. On those occasions, the person in question payed one of the people associated with the fairies to be the host of a dinner at their homes, meeting the fairies while the owners of the house slept.

The fairy witch trials

Between 1579 and 1651, 65 people (of which 8 where male), where put on trial for sorcery on Sicily claiming to be associates of the fairies. The Inquisition called them witches, but often did not take these cases seriously, as they never mentioned the Devil in their confessions. The Inquisition did occasionally associate meetings with the elves as events similar to a Witches' Sabbath, but as the public had a positive view of the phenomena, they did not press the matter. The accused said that they had been called because they had "Sweet blood", and that they in most cases went to the meetings in their souls only, while they left their bodies behind them. This is similar to the concept of astral projection and was something they had in common with the Benandanti.

In 1630, the medicine woman Vicencia la Rosa was sentenced to banishment and a ban from ever mentioning anything about the elves again, but she told people about her personal elf Martinillo, who took her to "Benevento" where she had sex and learned medicine, and she was arrested again and sent in exile from Sicily for life.

References

* Eva Kärfve, "Den Stora ondskan i Valais". (in Swedish)