My fascination with Celtic mythology began with the 1959 movie Darby O’Gill and the Little People. It wasn’t O’Gill’s obsession with the mischievous leprechauns that caught my attention. Nor was it the handsome Sean Connery, or even the pretty young girl who fell over a cliff—and for him. It wasn’t even the headless horseman who came for the girl. No, it was the keening banshee. She scared the bejesus out of the 10-year-old me.
One of the most recognizable Celtic apparitions, the Banshee is a disembodied soul whose legendary wail foretells—but does not cause—death.
Physical accounts of this tragic figure vary—from beautiful maiden, to majestic matron, to ugly hag. In some instances, this triple goddess wears a tattered, white shroud; in others, a black cape; in still others, a grey cloak over a green, red, or white dress. Sometimes, she appears naked. Her body is ethereal, her complexion ghastly, and her hair, which she may comb while wailing, long. Her eyes are red from weeping.
It is, however, her blood-curdling lament that cuts across all descriptions. It is behind the simile “to scream like a banshee.” Known as “keening,” the word comes from the Irish caoineadh (pronounced ˈkiːnʲə), which means “to lament.” Sorrowful and high-pitched, keening has been described as similar to an animal’s howl. It is heard three times before someone dies.
Although the banshee is fundamentally a herald of death, some traditions hold that she is, in essence, a protective spirit who mourns the passing of a loved one.
Darby O’Gill and the Little People, 1959
What is a Banshee?
In the Irish language, an earthen mound is called a sídhe (pronounced shee). It is a gateway to the Otherworld. A woman is called a bean (pronounced ban). Thus, a woman of the mounds is a bean sídhe, or banshee.
According to George Cinclair Gibson, PhD, author of Wake Rites: The Ancient Irish Rituals of “Finnegans Wake,” there are two types of banshees: the sídhe-ban and the badhbh (pronounced bav). The sídhe-ban is young, beautiful, gentle, and able to see the future. Badhbh, however, is “a querulous, hideous, withered hag with long disheveled hair.” (p. 146) She is frequently seen washing the clothes of those who are about to die. Badbh was one of the three war goddesses known as the Morrígna (with Macha and the Morrígan). Often appearing as a hooded crow, Badbh was an omen of death.
While the general concept of a banshee is a common noun, Banshee refers to a specific mythological character.
In the online article, “What Is a Banshee? The Mythic Origins of Ireland’s Most Infamous Shrieking Spirit,” I.E. Kneverday proposes that Banshee originated with Brigid, the goddess who, ironically, is associated with rebirth on the fire festival of Imbolc (February 2).
Brigid is the daughter of the Dagda, the chief god of the Tuatha Dé Danann. Her son Ruadán was killed in the Second Battle of Moytura. The goddess lamented his death in a crying song, which is the first known instance of keening.
Considered to be an immortal, god-like race, the Tuatha Dé Danann were banished to the sídhe by the conquering Milesians.
D. R. McAnally Jr. wrote Irish Wonders (1888), a collection of folklore tales. He states that banshees only visit the descendants of Ireland’s “old families,” who are alleged to be of pure Milesian stock. These would be the MacCarthys, Magraths, O’Neills, O’Rileys, O’Sullivans, O’Reardons, and O’Flahertys (pp 93–94).
Personally Speaking
One of the earliest written accounts of a banshee comes from Lady Anne Fanshawe. In The Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe (1829), Lady Anne was visiting Lady Honora O’Brien at an ancient castle near Limerick.
Lady Anne told her son that on the first night, she was awakened at about 1 a.m. by a “woman leaning into the window, through the casement, in white, with red hair and pale and ghastly complexion.” She intoned what sounded like the word “horse” or “ahone” thrice. Then, “with a sigh more like the wind than breath, she vanished, and to me her body looked more like a thick cloud than substance.”
The next day, Lady Honora told Lady Anne that her cousin, whose ancestors owned the house in which she had slept, had died at two o’clock in the morning.
“When any die of this family,” said Lady Honora, “the shape of a woman appears in this window every night until they be dead” (pp 64–65).
Lady Jane Francesca Wilde, widely recognized as Oscar Wilde’s mother, preserved the mythology, folklore, and mystical superstitions of Ireland in her 1919 book, Ancient Legends of Ireland. In it, she reported that the banshee’s appearance exists on a spectrum, with beautiful women on one end and demon-monsters on the other (pp 168–169).
In The Banshee (2010), Elliott O’Donnell agrees with Lady Wilde’s interpretation and adds that while banshees run the gamut in appearance, “only a few take the form of something that is wholly diabolical, and frightful, and terrifying in the extreme.”
But O’Donnell, a pioneer in the contemporary ghost-hunting subculture, believes that the banshee is never really seen—only heard. She announces herself “sometimes by groaning, sometimes by wailing, and sometimes by uttering the most blood-curdling of screams.”
He states that his mother heard “a series of the most harrowing screams” on the night before his father died thousands of miles away. She and her servants thought a woman was being murdered in the garden. The cries “finally died away in a long, protracted wail, full of such agony and despair, that my mother and her companions were distressed beyond words.”
Historical References
Historians take a more measured approach.
They point to the eighth century when women, known as “keeners,” were hired to sing mournful songs to express their condolences over the passing of a loved one in the old clans.
According to Jacelyn O’Conner, in the online article, “The Irish Custom of the Keening Women (Caoineadh),” keening was “performance, prayer, and poetry all at once.” Known as bean chaointe, or mourning women, they acted as guides for the soul’s passage to the Otherworld. Keeners were skilled oral poets whose breathless utterances followed a poetic structure of alliteration, repetition, rhyme, and rhythm. They were often paid with whiskey.
Although widespread by the 12th century, keening began to decline by the 18th century and disappeared in the 1950s, because religious leaders opposed the tradition as pagan and inappropriate. Families also began to fear that keening would mark them as part of a backward-thinking culture.
Learn More
For further reading, see Random Creepy Scene # 72: Darby O’Gill & the Little People.
For a video with an allegedly true story, see Banshee | Irish Legend, Story and Folklore.
To hear examples, watch Keening | Six Authentic Recordings from Ireland and Scotland.
To listen to stories about keening, visit the Keening Wake Research Project.
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