Late at night, in the Irish countryside, a sound carries across the fields: a long, rising, sobbing cry, like a woman lamenting — or like no human voice at all. Those who hear it know what it means. Someone in a nearby family is about to die. The cry belongs to the banshee, the spirit woman who mourns the dead before they die.
The banshee is the most famous figure in Irish folklore, and one of the best documented. Folklorists have collected thousands of accounts from all over Ireland, many from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, describing encounters with her. Yet she is often misunderstood. She is not a monster who causes death. She does not harm anyone. She is a messenger and a mourner, whose grief comes before the loss.
The Name
Banshee is an anglicized form of the Irish bean sí (older spelling bean sídhe), meaning “woman of the fairy mound” — that is, a woman of the Aos Sí, the otherworldly people who live inside the ancient mounds of Ireland. The Aos Sí are the descendants, in folk tradition, of the Tuatha Dé Danann, the old gods of Ireland (see The Tuatha Dé Danann).
In some parts of Ireland, especially in the south-east, she is known as the badhb (pronounced roughly bive), a name that links her directly to Badb, the battle goddess and one of the forms of the Morrígan. In parts of Ulster she is sometimes called the bean chaointe, “keening woman.”
The Keening
The banshee’s cry is modelled on a real Irish tradition: keening (caoineadh), the formal lament sung over the dead at wakes and funerals. Keening was performed by women, sometimes by professional mourners called mná caointe, who would wail, clap their hands, and sing improvised verses praising the dead and expressing grief. The practice was discouraged by the Catholic Church and had largely died out by the early twentieth century, but it was an important part of Irish funerals for centuries.
The banshee is, in effect, a supernatural keening woman. She begins her lament before the death occurs, as if the Otherworld already knows. Her cry is variously described as a wailing, a sobbing, a screeching, or a low, eerie singing, and it is said to be unmistakable — once heard, never forgotten.
What Does She Look Like?
Most people who reported the banshee said they only heard her. Those who claimed to have seen her describe her in different ways:
- An old woman, small and stooped, with long white or grey hair, wearing a grey or black cloak. This is the most common image in folklore accounts.
- A young, beautiful woman with long flowing hair, dressed in white.
- A washer woman, seen at a stream washing the bloodstained clothes of the one who is to die — a form closely related to the Scottish bean nighe and the washer at the ford of early Irish legend.
A particularly common detail is that the banshee is seen combing her long hair with a comb, usually silver. In many regions it was believed that if you found a comb lying on the ground, you should never pick it up, because the banshee might have dropped it and would come to reclaim it.
Her eyes are often described as red from continual weeping.
Which Families Does She Follow?
According to tradition, the banshee does not keen for everyone. She attaches herself to certain old Irish families, usually those with names beginning in Ó or Mac — families of ancient Gaelic descent. The most frequently mentioned are the O’Neills, O’Briens, O’Connors, O’Gradys, and Kavanaghs. Later tradition added families that had intermarried with them.
This connection with old families may reflect her origin as a guardian spirit or ancestress of the lineage — a kind of family goddess who mourns her descendants. In some stories she is said to be the ghost of a woman of the family who died long ago.
Having a banshee was, in a strange way, a mark of prestige: it showed that your family was old and truly Irish.
Famous Banshee Stories
The earliest literary reference to a banshee-like figure is often identified in a fourteenth-century text, Caithréim Thoirdhealbhaigh (“The Triumphs of Turlough”), which tells of the wars of the O’Briens. Before a battle in 1318, an Irish army meets a hideous old woman at a ford, washing a heap of armour and heads. She tells them she is the Bronach of Burren, and that the heads and armour belong to them. The prophecy comes true.
A frequently told seventeenth-century account comes from the memoirs of Lady Ann Fanshawe, an English aristocrat who stayed with the O’Briens in 1650. She wrote that she woke in the night to see a pale woman with red hair at the window, who wailed three times and vanished. In the morning she learned that a member of the household had died during the night. Her host explained that whenever someone of the family was dying, a woman was seen at the window — a woman, it was said, who had been seduced and murdered by an ancestor, and buried beneath that very window.
The Banshee and the Morrígan
Many folklorists see the banshee as a folk descendant of the ancient goddesses of death and sovereignty. The Morrígan and Badb of early Irish myth appeared as crows over battlefields and as washers at the ford, washing the armour of those about to die (see The Morrígan). As the old religion faded, these fierce goddesses may have survived in folk belief as a humbler, more domestic figure — a spirit tied to particular families, crying outside their houses rather than over battlefields.
The Irish scholar Patricia Lysaght, in her comprehensive study The Banshee: The Irish Supernatural Death-Messenger (1986), analysed hundreds of folklore accounts collected by the Irish Folklore Commission and showed how consistent the core beliefs were across the country.
Related Figures
The banshee has relatives across the Celtic world:
- In Scotland, the bean nighe (“washing woman”) is seen washing the grave clothes of those about to die at a stream. If you catch her, she may grant you three wishes or tell you your fate.
- In Wales, the Gwrach y Rhibyn (“hag of the mist”) is a hideous old woman who shrieks at the window of someone about to die, or appears at crossroads.
- In Brittany, the Kannerezed Noz (“night washerwomen”) wash the shrouds of the dead at night.
- In Scottish Highland tradition, the caointeach is a wailing spirit that attaches itself to certain clans.
The Banshee in Popular Culture
The banshee has been adapted countless times — often transformed into a screaming monster or a vengeful ghost, far from the grieving spirit of Irish tradition. She appears in the Disney film Darby O’Gill and the Little People (1959), in countless horror films, in comics (the X-Men’s Banshee has a sonic scream), and in video games. The phrase “to wail like a banshee” has entered the English language.
In Ireland, the older belief persisted well into the twentieth century and is still spoken of today, sometimes half-seriously, sometimes not. When someone in an old family dies, there is often someone who says they heard the crying the night before.
Last reviewed: September 2026.