Friday, October 24, 2008

The Wail of All Hallow's Eve...

The Banshee Myth is traditionally a female Irish spirit from the Other World; a messenger of Death and tidings of woe.

In Irish legend, a banshee wails around a house if someone in the house is about to die. There are particular families who are believed to have Banshees attached to them, and whose cries herald the death of a member of that family. Traditionally, when a citizen of an Irish village died, a woman would sing a lament (in Irish, caoineadh, [ˈkiːnʲə] or [ˈkiːnʲuː], "caoin" meaning "to weep, to wail") at their funeral. (Wikipedia "Banshee").



Banshees are often described as dressed in white or grey, and having long, fair hair which they brush with a silver comb. Other accounts portray them dressed in colors, including green ...



Her Scottish counterpart is the bean shìth (also spelled bean-shìdh). These spirits haunt the Celtic Isles this All Hallows Eve, the ghosts of women lost forever to this world...often they are portrayed as washerwomen, deformed and hag-like as they scrub the bloody clothes of the dead.
(Wikipedia: Banshee)

Happy Halloween.

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