Fairies and Witches at the Boundary of South-Eastern and Central Europe

"The goal of this book's author is to reconstruct an archaic fairy mythology she presumes preceded the witchcraft demonology instituted by the Roman Catholic church, and to show the process of "witchization," that is, the blend of the two systems resulting in the integration of fairylike beings into the modern witch figure. Pócs focuses on peoples of the Balkan Peninsula: mainly Serbs, Croats, Bulgarians, and Romanians. Furthermore, she extends her survey to adjacent Hungary in order to establish the patterns and component elements of a "pure," but now extinct Balkanic fairy belief system that continued under the influence of other traditional spirit belief systems and the homogenizing effect of the system of witches. The author contends that during a complicated process of retroaction ofdiverse belief contingencies over time and space, the supernatural, demonic fairy being of the Balkans became humanized whereas the  domestic village woman, the witch, borrowed demonic attributes from the Balkan fairy. She mentions the possibility that a phase of partnership between the demonic (fairy) and the human (witch) existed during the processes of integration." (Linda Dégh)