ABSTRACT
The banshee is a supernatural creature of the Celtic British Isles (Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man) whose name comes from the Irish bean sídhe (woman of the mound/ Otherworld). Her wild and grief-stricken wailing (or keening) foretells, but usually does not cause, the death of an individual. She can often be heard at twilight, midnight, or dawn beneath the windows of the soon-to-be-deceased’s home or along the trail of his or her funeral procession, and occasionally by a stream, grave mound, or other natural feature. Literature often features the banshee as a sorrowful old woman with bloodshot eyes and white hair, wearing a gray or green dress, and weeping at impending death, although at times she is a more sinister being who delights in or even causes death. Some traditions believe that the banshee is the spirit of a woman who died while giving birth or of a murdered pregnant woman; and Patricia Lysaght describes how the banshee is often thought to be the deceased ancestor of a family of noble Irish descent and is therefore an “attendant spirit” whose lamentation is an extension of the family’s sorrow and grief (53-6). The banshee is sometimes known as the young and beautiful but terrifying badb (or badhbh) or the bean chaointe (keening woman), and is associated with other female spirits, such as the Scotch-Gaelic ban nighechain (washerwoman), the Scottish glaistig, and the Welsh cyhiraeth.
