The Banshee (Bean Sí)

Not a bringer of death but an announcer of it, and attached to particular families rather than to anyone.

Bean sí means woman of the mounds, from the same sídhe as the aos sí. The older spelling you will still see is bean sídhe, which is the pre-reform form of the same words.

The important thing, and the thing that is usually got wrong, is that she does not cause death and does not threaten anyone. She announces. Hearing her is not a danger to the hearer; it means that someone, usually of a particular family, has died or is about to.

She is a keener. Keening, from caoineadh, was a real and formal practice in Ireland, performed at wakes by women who were sometimes paid for it, and it survived into living memory before the clergy largely suppressed it. The bean sí is that office carried into the otherworld: the cry is described as the sound of a woman at a wake, and the people who reported hearing one were hearing something they knew from ordinary life.

Tradition attaches her to specific families rather than to the population at large, and the lists usually name the old Gaelic names, the O’Neills, O’Briens, O’Connors, O’Gradys and Kavanaghs among them. Having a bean sí was a mark of ancient lineage and spoken of as such.

She is described as combing her hair, and there is a widespread warning against lifting a comb found lying on the ground, which is the kind of specific, practical detail that tells you a belief was once taken seriously.