Folkloric border zones were places of both danger and transformation.

Evidence

If these edges were dangerous, they were also powerful places. In folklore, betwixt and between are important zones of transformation. The edge of the water was where wisdom revealed itself; spirits were banished to the spaceless places “between the froth and the water” or “betwixt the bark and the tree.” Similarly, temporal junctures between winter and summer, or between night and day, were dangerous moments of intersection with the Otherworld. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 113

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• FICTION: The ‘spaceless places’ between froth and water or bark and tree are evocative liminal settings for creative writing.

Related

• Medieval folklore made border zones sites of dangerous transformation (similarity 0.93)