In the historical folklore of Sicily, (Spanish for "Ladies from the Outside"; Sicily was under Spanish rule at the time) were supernatural female beings comparable to the fairies of English folklore. In the 16th to mid-17th centuries, the also played a role in the witch trials in Sicily. The Fairies of Sicily In historical Sicilian folklore, the } would make contact with humans, mostly women deemed to have “sweet blood”, whom they took to Benevento ("the Blockula of Sicily"), by mounting them on magical, flying goats. The fairies were called , which was also a name for the women who associated with them. They were 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 ; were 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. Between 1579 and 1651 there were a number of recorded witch trials in Sicily. The trial summaries, sent to the Spanish Inquisition's Suprema in Madrid by the Sicilian tribunal, reflected a total of 65 people, eight of them male, many of whom were believed to be associates of fairies, who were put on trial for sorcery. The Inquisition denounced them as witches, but