Book of Shadows (MYTHICAL CREATURES A-Z)

Banshee

Banshee (the 'wailing woman') mythology originated from the Celtic isles of Ireland, Scotland, and Great Britain. A banshee is Irish fairy creature. The legend is passed down through generations because of its consistent haunting quality. 

 A banshee is a ghostly woman. Their high pitched screams prophesy the death of someone soon to come. The ghostly screams are heard at night and it sounds like a blend between a woman's scream and a night creature's wail. According to myth, that if you hear the wail of a banshee then someone close to you, or possibly yourself, will soon meet their end.

An ancient Irish tradition called "keening" is where a woman will wail following a person's death. Keeners were often in demand. People would hire the best keeners to wail for their loved ones. This makes us wonder if the banshee, could be a ghost of a great keener. The major difference is that keening happens after the death of a person while the banshee's cry happens before the death of a person. So hearing a banshee's wail before means that someone close to you will die very soon.

There isn't much information about banshees in Celtic mythology because this was a rare thing. The information on these mythical creatures come from what they sound like, not what they look like. People who have seen a banshee describe them as a thin, old woman wearing a traditional burial robe (typically given to those people with no family or religious identification) which is often torn and tattered. Their hair is wild and uncombed; they have wrinkled skin. Banshees appear in a non-corporeal form, meaning they have no physical body, and their ghostly figures float several feet above ground and they can pass through solid objects.

According to an old Irish legend, it states that if you find a comb, particularly a silver one, never to pick it up, for it is probably the property of a banshee. Another legend says that only certain families were targets of the banshee; but this has been displaced as members of these families moved on and married into other families. Sometimes the banshee is considered to be part of the family. Banshees are not actually fairies. The term fairy is used commonly in old Irish myths to describe supernatural, yet human-like figures. In modern terms, the banshee is its own creature with some ties to the fairy world.