Where to Hear the Eerie Call of Ireland’s Banshees

In Ireland, it’s an old, familiar story: A man is following a river home one night when he hears an unearthly, mournful wailing. He looks for its source but sees only familiar green hills in the moonlight. It’s only the next day, after a member of his family dies, that he realizes what he has heard: the banshee.

Known as bean sí in Gaelic, the banshee is the supernatural death messenger of Irish folklore. Her scream, often heard near water, is said to augur the imminent death of a family member. As with many specters rooted in oral traditions, the banshee’s origins are unclear, but University College Dublin’s National Folklore Collection—recognized by UNESCO for its global significance—includes hundreds of stories of banshee encounters.

And the banshee’s story is still being reinterpreted today. The new anthology Banshee, for example, offers a feminist take on the apparition. The tales of the seanchaíthe, traditional Irish storytellers who share local lore at pubs and festivals, are also helping keep the banshee myth alive. “The tradition of death omens in folklore is so strong because it attempts to answer our ultimate questions,” says Kelly Fitzgerald, head of Irish folklore and ethnology at University College Dublin. “We want to know what happens when we die—and we want to know when it’s going to happen.”

Following Ireland’s banshee trail

Different stories present the banshee’s nature in different ways. The legend may have sprung from caoineadh, the keening or death lament that Irish women have long performed at funerals; one variation of the banshee’s name, bean chaointe, means “keening woman.” Other tales refer to her as the badb, or crow, conflating her with the Irish goddess of war who sometimes took the form of a crow on the battlefield. Bean sí, meanwhile, can translate to “fairy woman” or “woman of the fairy mound.”

Some scholars dispute the etymological connection to fairies, but that’s what Conor Ó Buachalla, a seanchaí in West Cork, stresses on e-bike tours with his ecotourism company Gormú. He directs guests’ attention to a small mountain thought to be the Beann a’ tSídheáin, or “peak of the fairy mound.” It's said to be the spot where the mythical Tuatha Dé Danann people were banished to the underworld by the Gaels—becoming the first fairies and, by some accounts, giving rise to the banshee.

County Cork is the fabled home of Clíodhna, queen of the banshees, and Ó Buachalla’s tours continue along the shores of Glandore Harbor, where legend holds that Clíodhna’s sea god father drowned her as punishment for falling in love with a mortal. Her forlorn cry can supposedly be heard when a powerful wave, known as Tonn Clíodhna, or the wave of Clíodhna, rolls in. (“Skeptics would say that it’s cavitation from waves in sea caves,” Ó Buachalla says).

Northwest of Glandore, the County Cork town of Bandon hosts a Banshee Festival leading up to Samhain, the ancient Celtic celebration that’s the progenitor of Halloween. But Cork doesn’t have a banshee monopoly. In County Clare, for example, the Daelagh River has been the site of so many encounters that it’s often referred to as Banshee’s Brook. Rivers and lochs all across Ireland come with their own banshee tales. “Water is a liminal element, an entrance to the other world,” says Patricia Lysaght, professor emerita of European ethnology at University College Dublin. “The sound of the banshee often comes along the river toward the home.”

More than just spooky stories

In many accounts, the banshee would cry only for certain aristocratic families—usually an O’ or a Mac—bestowing prestige on those who heard her lament. After Anglo-Normans invaded Ireland in the 12th century, many of them claimed a banshee haunting to appear more Gaelic and legitimize their right to the land. Clans would take the warning seriously, Lysaght says, and begin preparing for a burial and wake.

Many tales collected by seanchaí and folklorist Eddie Lenihan—published in his book Meeting the Other Crowd: The Fairy Stories of Hidden Ireland—depict the banshee as an old woman combing her long white hair, which is why it’s said in Ireland that one should never pick up a discarded comb. One story takes place in what’s now Burren National Park, an otherworldly limestone landscape in County Clare. There, a young man on his way home encounters a cloaked figure and grabs the stranger from behind, thinking it’s a friend playing a prank. The banshee responds by clawing his cheek, leaving a scar.

It’s a cautionary tale to warn against pestering unaccompanied women, says Lysaght—and a reminder that real-world lessons can come wrapped in supernatural lore. “All stories are true,” as Ó Buachalla puts it. “Some just aren’t real.”