'An old man makes his way back through the woods as the sun starts to set, careful not to slip on the moss-covered rocks that line the river. The winter air bites and the tree branches creak in the wind. He hums an old Irish tune to ward off the spirits. But that’s when he hears a most terrible noise. Some describe the banshee as screaming, but it’s more than that. It’s a primal wail from the heart, howling with such sorrow as he has never heard. Ahead, in the darkening woods, the old man sees a woman. Her long, silver hair tucked under her shroud, her pale face peering out. Her green dress matches the green of the moss. He turns and runs. But once you’ve heard the call of the banshee, there is no escape. Death is coming to your family. And there is nothing you can do to stop it. The banshee watches on. She watches the old man disappear into the shadows. She only sings for his family, and she will continue to sing for thousands of years. She wails into the night – a warning to her loved ones. '
The tales of the Banshee first emerged in the 1380s. The word banshee translates in Old Irish as ‘woman of the fairy mound’. These mounds, or tumuli, can be found in Ireland and often act as marking points for graves. The legend of the Banshee builds on an old Irish tradition called ‘keening’. This is the practice of women who would sing, or howl, a lament for the dead at funerals. It was a primitive noise, an innate expression of grief that seemed almost supernatural in its sound. Keening comes from the Gaelic ‘ag caoineadh’ which means crying and also ‘caoineadh na marbh’ which means a lament for the dead. Mary McLaughlin described keening as ‘a sacred improvised chant.’ According to legend, the first keening came from the mouth of the goddess Brigid when her son died.
These keening women, called mnàthantuirim, would gather at wakes and funerals to sing their lament for the dead. Keening was a talent, which often meant elderly women carried out the practice after years of practising their vocals, learning how to keen spontaneously and in sync with the other keeners. Keening has been described as “(not) singing, it wasn’t anything you could describe… A very melancholy chant, rhythmic … Almost a spontaneous choir”
Keening women ‘represented the otherworld’, as Christina Brophy notes, the Old Irish concept of the afterlife, the place where the dead went. While men represented the living world, with their power and control, women – with their ‘mysterious’ and ‘wild’ nature – represented the world of the dead. Although, as Brophy notes, while it was predominantly a woman’s role to keen, men would sometimes keen for ‘warriors’ who had died on the battlefield. It was believed that keening released the soul from the body and allowed it to travel to the otherworld.
Some keening women would have looked like the feared Banshee, as they walked barefoot, wore old clothes that they ripped at – along with their hair – as they keened for dead strangers. Keeners were often paid with alcohol, as this was the only thing poorer families could offer. As a result, keening women were often seen as disorderly and disruptive.
Brophy argues that keening was seen as wild and ‘barbaric’ by the English who colonised Ireland and keening only added to the idea that the Irish were savages who needed to be ‘civilised’ by the English. In 1610, Barnaby Rich wrote:
"A straunger that had never seen the sight before, at the first encounter, would beleeve that a company of hags or hellish fiendes were carrying a dead body to some infernall mansion; for what with the unseemlinesse of their shewes, and the il-faring noyse they doe make, with their howling and crying, an ignorant man would sooner beleeve they were devils of hell, then Christian people."
Yet, keening is not something to be feared but a beautiful, moving expression of grief. Keening was not a wild, incomprehensible sound. It was art that incorporated messages for the dead and Gaelic music. Rhythm would be kept by hammering on the ground or even the coffin. As an old Irish woman recalled
"while the grave was being opened the women sat down among the flat tombstones… and began the wild keen, or crying forthe dead… Each old woman, as she took her turn in the leading recitative seemed possessed for the moment with a profound ecstasy of grief, swaying to and fro, and bending her forehead to the stone before her while she called out to the dead with a perpetually recurring chant of sobs… All around the graveyard other wrinkled women, looking out from under the deep red petticoats that cloaked them, rocked themselves with the same rhythm, and intoned the inarticulate chant that is sustained by all as an accompaniment."
Mary McLaughlin notes that keening allowed for an ‘emotional release’ and was a way for the ‘community’ to bond together in a time of grief – as other women would join inwith the professional keeners. No keen was ever the same, as no life was ever the same, and no experience of death or grief. The practice of keening continued until the mid-1900s, which means there are some rare recordings of the practice and also contemporary versions. However, due to pressure from the Catholic Church – when faced with such an ancient, pagan ritual - the practice died out. Keening was also a woman’s power – which also meant that it challenged the patriarchal order of the Catholic Church.
After the loss of keening John Millington Synge recalled: ‘Before they covered the coffin an old man kneeled down by the grave and repeated a simple prayer for the dead. There was irony in these words of atonement and Catholic belief spoken by voices that were still hoarse with the cries of pagan desperation.’
With the loss of keening comes the loss of a powerful expression of a community’s grief. As Brophy noted, the keening women’s ‘job was not just to mourn but to involve audiences in overwhelming and at times unnerving grief.’ Their job was to pull the community into the grief, so that they could experience their despair together. In a time when many have experienced recent grief, the loss of keening reflects a loss within society to face grief. Today our grief is silent, and many may yearn to howl like a Banshee to release their sorrow.
Written by Hannah, MA Public History, Issue 9 Myths, Fairytales & Legends, Autumn 2022.
Image 1: W.H. Brooke, Banshee, Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland by Thomas Crofton Croker, 1825, Public Domain, Wiki Commons.