Do Banshees Scream, or Weep?
The banshee is a female spirit connected to Irish burial tumuli. Her most common appearance is said to be that of wearing a green dress with an old grey cloak. A banshee is usually seen as an old woman with a haggard grey face. Some sightings insist, however, that their banshee is red-haired, with a white dress and an white face. A banshee’s eyes are always red, from weeping and they are seen as small folk, between one to four feet. Scottish Celts see their banshees as having drooping breasts, one nostril and webbed feet.
Banshees are said to belong to specific families. They are heralds of death and are also known as the ‘wailing women’, or “keeners”. Keening is what women did at Celtic funerals when ‘crying the coronach’. Keening ranges from moaning, through wailing to screeching and, at Celtic funerals, was often accompanied by women tearing their hair and rending their own clothes. Celts had professional keeners who went around from funeral to funeral. Banshees are usually seen crouching beneath trees, but they can often fly past you, while wailing, and then you know that someone in the family is going to die. Several banshees wailing together betoken the death of a great hero, or someone holy. Their screeching can shatter glass. Scots Celts sometimes see a banshee washing the clothes, or armour of a person who is about to die, and they call her the ‘little washerwoman’: bean nighe. Nowhere is there a record of banshees being mischievous, or causing death. They merely foretell it.
The Old Irish word for banshee is ‘ben side’ which is pronounced banshee. This means ‘woman of the fairy mound.’ The Norse also had banshees, as did Middle Earthlings.
Most surnames associated with having banshees are Goidelic Celts, i.e. their prefixes are O’ or Mc/Mac.
An account has been collected of a great family of fishers in a village by the sea in Cornwall, near Tintagel. This family were the eighth generation of fishers and there were three sons each with three big boats. The eldest son, Trefussis, decided upon the fishing grounds and he left the fish preparation and selling to his wife, as was always done. Treffusis was blessed with four children, but the boy child was the love of his life. Iachan was seven years old and ruled his mother and sisters with an iron rod, as, he told them, one day, he, too, would have a boat of his own.
One day, Elisa, the eldest daughter of Trefussis , who came to look for the boy, for to get his dinner, found him, half way up a cliff, looking for birds’ eggs to steal. She called him down, but he refused to listen to her, telling her to return home, as he wished to raid all of the nests on that cliff. When eventually he returned home and his mother attempted to remonstrate with him about the dangers of sea cliffs, he told her to ‘Go to’ as he was doing man’s work.
Trefussis, himself was forced to reprimand Iachan, one day, when he found the boy deliberately wading out into the quicksands in order to find crabs to kill. Iachan explained to his father that he didn’t need any exhortations because he was the next head of the family and would be in charge when his father had gone.
One day, Iachan’s mother was filleting the herring down on a trestle table on the beach, with the other fishwives. They were putting the prepared fish into barrels of salt with layers of salt in between. It was very messy work, gutting fish, but Iachan’s mother had kilted up her skirts over her Trefussis’ old trousers. Suddenly, interrupting the banter of the fishwives, was heard a terrible, eldritch scream, followed by a high, wavering wailing. Iachan’s mother looked along the beach in the direction of the children, at the far end. She saw a lot of movement and two children detach themselves from the group and come running down the beach.
Iachan’s mother ran towards them and they dragged her to the deep rock pool at the edge of the cliffs where the children were forbidden to fish. This pool was deep and had terrible undercurrents. Iachan’s mother saw Iachan’s little cap floating on the clear waters of the pool, and the children shouted that Iachan had fallen whilst fishing there. They could not stop him, they said. Luckily, Iachan’s mother’s friends had run up to and were able to take the arms of the mother and prevent her casting herself into the pool to look for the boy, whilst her wails joined the terrible wails that went on from a small old woman in a green dress on the top of the cliff.
This tale demonstrates how banshees can herald death from the inside of a house, but even in the outer elements, too.
