The Woman Whose Cry Foretells a Death

The bean sidhe ("woman of the fairy mounds") is a herald rather than an agent: her keening (caoineadh) at night foretells a death in a family, but she does not cause it. In the older Irish material she attaches to particular lineages, traditionally the great families whose surnames carry O or Mac, and her wailing is understood as the supernatural counterpart of the human keening women who lamented at wakes.

Related figures appear across the Gaelic world: the Scottish bean nighe ("washer-woman"), seen washing the bloodstained clothes of the one about to die, is a close cousin. In some accounts the banshee is a beautiful young woman, in others a hideous hag, and she may comb her hair, a detail tied to a folk taboo against picking up a comb found lying out of doors. The banshee is one of the most durable figures of Irish folklore and has passed, much diluted, into English as a byword for a piercing scream ("wailing like a banshee"), a usage that keeps the cry and drops the mourning that gave it meaning.