The Banshee

Hone, following Brand, notes that certain families were believed to have their own warnings of a coming death, some by the appearance of a bird and others by a tall woman in white who shrieked about the house. In Ireland she was called the banshee, the shrieking woman. The Highlanders, like the Irish, believed that deaths were foretold by the cries of the benshi, the fairies’ wife, heard along the paths their funerals would take.