Banshee: The Irish Death Messenger

This is the best book out there on the Banshee. It was great fun to read, I loved it. Full of Irish myths about the Banshee's leaving their combs around, and stealing butter, etc. Areas, and maps, where various Banshee types most appeared in Ireland (The washer women Banshee, The Banshee women combing her hair, The women crying, and "Keaning". Stories about several Banshee's crying, "Keaning" at once. A list of Family names that are said to have a Banshee. Detailed history and information about Irish wakes. Great fun.

I was remarkably pleased by Patricia Lysaght's "The Banshee: the Irish Death Messenger". It's a very well documented study of the popularity of various elements of the banshee folklore, complete with annotations and maps showing where and how often these themes show up in various geographic areas. Using earlier manuscripts as well as a folklore study she conducted in 1976, Lysaght does a really good job of showing how one does good folklore research. While the source matter was of significant interest to me, I had just as much enjoyment from reading about how she felt that the phrasing of her survey questions might have affected the responses, or how other elements in folklore, language migration, or history may have resulted in the data she gathered. (For example, the absence of banshee-combing-her-hair legends along the western coast is fairly well tied to the presence of mermaid-combing-her-hair legends in the same region -- the maps of the occurrence of each of those legends complement each other but don't overlap almost anywhere.) It is an academic text, but is also readable to the more casually interested Celtic geek -- just skip the 200 pages of footnotes and appendices.

This is Patricia Lysaght's doctoral dissertation, made over very slightly and published for a general audience. Therefore, it is not about entertainment. The reason to get this book is that you are interested in finding out more about the figure of Irish folklore known as the banshee. There are references to, and frequent quotes from, written and recorded stories concerning banshees, and these are interesting and amusing, but they are not the heart of the book. Lysaght analyzes each story, breaks down its elements, and shows the geographic and temporal distribution of those elements throughout Ireland. Then she tries to draw conclusions from these distributions. This analysis yields such data as that there are, for no apparent reason, no known banshee sightings in Counties Cork or Waterford, but many stories of them being heard; while just north of Waterford banshees are often seen as attractive women; further north and west, they tend to be reported as gnomish crones. If this is the sort of thing that interests you, this is the book for you. It is heavily annotated, indexed, and sourced; it has extensive appendices and a large bibliography (as befits a scholarly work, these sections form the bulk of the book). Lysaght also spends some time theorizing about the origins of the banshee legend (not easy, as she has only a few ancient sources to work with -- a difficulty she does not acknowledge, and she seems perhaps too certain of her conclusions) and spends the final chapter considering the eventual fate of the banshee in these days when folklore is being replaced by urban legends. The Banshee is not the sort of thing you should read for enteratinment, or the kind of thing you will read your kids before they go to bed; it's not about banshee stories. It's the story behind the story, and it is exhaustive enough to satisfy anyone's curiosity in that regard.

I became interested in the banshee because of some research I was doing and was delighted to find a scholarly work on the subject. While it is obvious that a remarkable amount of research went into writing the book, it is still readable for the layman. Every aspect of the banshee from different names, connections with certain families, aural manifestations, visual manifestations, to legends of the banshee are included.If you are interested in Irish folklore and the banshee in particular, I highly recommend this book.