The Fisherwife of Palermo

The Fisherwife of Palermo, (Floruit 1588), was an unnamed 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 elves.
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 elves. She reportedly 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 claimed 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. 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 told the Inquisition, 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.
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 were 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 travelled from house to house, eating and drinking as they routinely embraced the town's infants. On those occasions, the person in question paid 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.

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