Flaming Red Hair

“These families each have their own banashee. She would be an old woman with long silver hair dressed in a grey hooded cloak or a white winding sheet; or a young maiden dressed in traditional green with long, flowing, flaming red hair.

“The Gaelic legend arose from the tradition of keening (caoineadh) or wailing that took place at a Wake or at the graveside. By drawing a comb through her hair as she was wailing the banashee would recall an old custom where mourners, on occasion, would tear out their hair in anguish when somebody close to them had died.”

Auntie Mary starts to comb slowly through her own long, wavy, flaming red hair. Hair so red and so rare. We watch her. She shakes her hair loose. It settles around her shoulders.

“The keening of the banashee carries over a great distance and, though beautiful, mournful and melancholy, has something of the chill hollow whistle of the wind through the keyhole on a dark stormy night.”

Auntie Mary, with her hands cupped to her mouth, does a fair impression of the wind whistling through the keyhole, looking at us carefully, to see how we are faring.

“If it was somebody very famous or very holy about to die, two or even three `banashees' would gather together to sing and wail”.

Auntie Mary nods gravely and pauses. For dramatic effect? To see how we are reacting? Or is she daunted by the prospect of the next step? Even she would struggle to sound like several banshees wailing together.