Banshee

The banshee — from the Irish bean sídhe, 'woman of the fairy mound' — is the keening herald of death in Irish tradition. Her cry, heard in the night near a house, was the surest sign that one of the family would soon die. She is most often described as a woman with long streaming hair, dressed in white, grey or green, sometimes glimpsed combing her tresses, her face wet with weeping. Certain old Gaelic families — particularly those whose names begin with O' and Mac — were said to have their own banshee who mourned only their dead.

Her wail echoes the caoineadh, the ritual keen once performed by living women over the bodies of the dead, here transformed into something otherworldly and prophetic. Related figures appear across the Celtic world, from the Scottish bean nighe, the washerwoman seen scrubbing the bloodstained linen of the doomed at a ford, to the Welsh cyhyraeth. Far from a malevolent spirit, the banshee does not cause death but grieves it in advance — a mournful guardian who attends a family's losses across the generations.