Bean Nighe
Inner Hebrides, Scotland
“This banshee serves a dual purpose, signalling impending death while occasionally acting as a messenger from the Otherworld.” Spooky Scotland
If you spot a sweet, elderly lady washing some clothes in a stream… do not approach. Run. Well, that might not be the case for every elderly Scottish washerwoman, but it certainly is the case for the Bean Nighe.
Frequently seen by solitary water bodies like streams, pools, and fords, the Bean Nighe is a banshee that is said to signal death and sometimes even bring messages from the beyond. They are often referred to as ‘washerwomen’ due to their act of washing blood, into pools of water, off the clothing of those who are destined to perish. Donald Mackenzie, in Scottish Folk-Lore and Folk Life (1935), said that the Bean Nighe would often sing mournful songs whilst washing if the victim was intended for a violent and gory end. Mackenzie also claims that if you manage to catch the Bean Nighe in time, she would grant you three wishes… I’m sure you could try and use one of those to bargain for your life.
It has been said that the Bean Nighe is the spirit of a woman who died during childbirth, doomed to then carry out the burden of predicting deaths through washing until she would have naturally died.
Tales of the Bean Nighe have been documented from the Mull and Tiree islands in the Inner Hebrides. The banshee of this area was described as having unusually long breasts, so much so that they would get in her way whilst washing the death-predicting clothes. Many say that the Mull and Tiree Bean Nighe would have to toss her long breasts over her shoulder to get her duties as a banshee completed.
So how would one expect to approach this Bean Nighe to try and get their wishes? People were warned away from walking up to her from the front, but to instead carefully tread up behind her and take one of her long breasts, draped down her back, into their mouths and announce themselves as her new foster child. The banshee would be willing, supposedly, to answer any questions from her foster children (given that the Bean Nighe apparently were mothers who died during childbirth) and this would open up the opportunity for you to ask whose clothes she is washing, finding out who is next to die. The foster child, you, would then have the power to let the washerwoman continue her duty or intervene and save a life.
There have also been tales of Bean Nighes spotted in the Isle of Skye, however instead of long boobs, these banshees appeared as small children. If a bystander was to identify the banshee first, the banshee would grant them their wishes. But if the banshee spotted the bystander first, they’d be allowed by some cosmic force to take every limb from the person. Ouch.
One story of a Bean Nighe has referred to the banshee as a mermaid, and was found in Loch Slin. It goes that one day a woman from Cromarty was walking alongside Loch Slin when a towering woman stood in the water, busily washing garments on a stone, appeared round a bend. The Cromarty woman noticed the ground was scattered with many other garments all splattered with blood. She dismissed what she saw, and went home. It was only after that she realised she had come upon the washerwoman days before a tragic incident at Fearn Abbey, in which the abbey’s roof caved in, resulting in the deaths of thirty-six people.
Remarkably, this little folklore tale aligns with verifiable historical facts, in 1742 the roof of Fearn Abbey did indeed collapse…
So what have we learned? Don’t trust old women? Watch out for long breasts or small children?…
Sources
Folklore Friday - The Bean Nighe | CLAN
The Bean-Nighe or washerwoman of the Ford
Scottish Folk-Lore And Folk Life - Studies In Race, Culture And Tradition. Donald Mackenzie, 1935. Published by Blackie and Son, Ltd.
