The Wailing Spirit

“There is a story told in the Emerald Isle about a faithful farmer, whilst on a journey of mercy in the night hours, who heard a faint wailing cry. The cry, faint at first, flared louder with ever step he took.

“At first it sounded to him like a poor wee lass a-weeping and whimpering for smitten love; then he thought the sound might be the whine of a lost
whelp. It was neither a pitiable maiden weeping nor a tiny animal pup whining, but the spirit of a wailing woman in plaintive lamentation.”

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Of all the stories, legends and myth about ghosts and faries, the Banshee is best known to the general public. Banshee or Bean-sidhe’ is Irish for fairy woman or; her sharp cries and piercing wails are also called keening’ (Caoineadh’ lament, Irish).

Take no fear as there is no harm or evil in her mere presence during the dark of night, unless she is seen in the act of wailing, but this is a fatal sign. The wail of banshee pierces gloom of the nightly hours, her notes rising and falling like the waves of the sea’ it also announces a mortal’s demise.

Whatever her origins, the banshee chiefly appears in one of three guises: Sometimes she is young and beautiful or sometime in the appearance of a wicked looking old hag. One writer described her as a tall, thin woman with long tangled hair that floated round her shoulders and uttering piercing cries of lament’. The banshee may also appear in a variety of forms, such as a hooded crow or other animals associated with witchcraft in Irish lore.

Throughout the Emerald Isle she could be heard in different sounds when she is mourning the coming death when it was just so dark, that forms of things were indistinct but not wholly lost. In some parts of Leinster, the banshee is referred to as the bean chaointe’ (keening woman) whose whose wailing cry can be so piercing that it shatters glass. Through the county of Kerry, the keen is heard as low, pleasant singing’. But through Tyrone, her cries can be heard as two boards being struck together; and on Rathin Isle as a thin, screeching sound between the wail of a woman and the screech of an owl’.

She usually wears a grey, hooded cloak or the winding sheet or grave robe of the unshriven dead. She may also appear in the guise of a washer-woman, and seen apparently washing the blood-stained clothes of those who are about to die. In this form she is known as the bean-nighe’ (washing woman).

She is a solitary woman spirit, mourning and forewarning those only of the best families in Ireland, those with the most Celtic lineage. When a member of the beloved race is dying, she paces the dark hills too and fro about his house. According to tradition in Irish lore, the banshee can only cry for five major Irish families; the O’Neils, the O’Briens, the O’Connors, the O’Gradys and the Kavanaughs. But, through the years, the list has been extended through intermarriage.

Each devilish banshee has her own mortal family. Unseen, the Lady of sorrow attends the funerals and wakes of the beloved dead. Although, sometimes in the dark of night during the vigil, her voice blending in with the the lamenting wails of the mourners.

Perhaps it is through strange adoration she follows the old race from the Emerald Isle across the seas to distant lands. Her wail and piercing cry can be heard by those chosen in America, America or way Down Under in the bushlands of Australia. But these souls of the Ould Sod never forget their blood ties and neither does the Banshee..

Thus on a final note - to the Irish folk the wailing woman is never perceived to the person whose death is predicted by signs only known to her. Other people may see or hear her, but the fated one never, so that when every one present is aware of the banshee but one, the fate of that one may be regarded as pretty well certain.

NOTES:
1) The most famous banshee of the ancient era was that attached to the kingly house of O’Brien, then known as Aibhill’, who haunted the rocky cliffs above Killaloe, near the old palace of Kincora. In 1014 AD in the battle of Clontarf, the aged king Brian Boru knew that that he would never come alive, for the previous night Aibhill had appeared before him to tell him of his impending fate.
2) “The Irish Banshee’ fairy is a Bean-Sidhe (Woman of the Hill); as priestess of the great dead she wails in phophetic anticipation whenever anyone of (Irish) royal blood is about to die.” (The White Goddess Robert Graves.)
3) One of the oldest and best-known stories is that related in the Memoirs of Lady Fanshaw (Scott’s - Lady of the Lake) As the story goes in 1642 when her husband, Sir Richard, and she chanced to visit a friend who happened to reside in a baronial castle, the regal lady was awoken by a ghastly and piercing cry. “Then she beheld in the moonlight a female face and part of her figure hovering at the window. The apparition continued to exhibit itself for some time, and then vanished with two shrieks similar to that which she heard at first.” The following morning she related with terror in her voice the incident to her host who remarked, “What my dear Lady Fanshaw had witnessed and heard was a banshee and her wailing forecast of death came true as a near relation of my family expired last night in the castle.”

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
1) Encyclopedia of World Mythology fowarded by Rex Warner.
2) Banshees’ - Wikepedia Free Encyclopedia
3) Occult Review for September 1913