White witch, or good witch, are qualifying terms in English used to distinguish those helpful witches who do not use magic to harm others from normal witches. It can refer to either fictional characters with such characteristics or to actual practitioners of folk magic called cunning folk or witch doctors; individuals who charged money for removing the supposed effects of witchcraft.
Sir Walter Scott spoke of such a person in his novel Kenilworth (1821): The antonym black witch is an entirely modern creation as it was not previously needed; in the past witches were viewed, almost without exception, as malefic, serving as imaginary scapegoats on which diseases and bad luck could be blamed. The terms "white witch" and "good witch" have been known in English from the 16th century but were fairly uncommon in ordinary use except in Devon and Cornwall until fairly recently. Perhaps the most famous "white witch" in modern literature is Glinda the Good Witch in L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and the film based on it.
Jadis, the White Witch is the main villain of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the first published book in C. S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia series, and the second chronologically. For her name, Lewis may have taken the French word jadis (ʒadis), which means "of old" or "once upon a time" — a customary opening in French fairy tales. The source may instead have been the Turkish word cadı dʒadɯ which means "witch".
In addition to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Jadis appears at length in The Magician's Nephew, which concerns her origins and the origins of Narnia.
