First of all, it's scream like a banshee. Second of all, it's not really screaming so much as a mournful announcement.The old had, hooded cloak version of a banshee. Note: she's not screaming!I once had a roommate who would claim, when his bladder was full to bursting, that he had to “pee like a banshee.”
But when others talk about “crying like a banshee” or “lying like a banshee,”or “fighting like a banshee,” it’s just embarrassing. A banshee screams (and only sometimes at that).
According to Irish legends, banshee (or bean-sidhe), are fairies or an ancestral spirit appointed to visit members of certain Irish families to warn them of their death.
The banshee typically appears in one of three guises — a beautiful young woman, a matronly middle-aged one, or an old hag. She wears a gray hooded cloak, a flowing twisted sheet or a gray robe. In some version, she appears as a washer-woman and appears to be washing blood from the clothes of the almost-dead.
Oh, and these pre-death announcements? The banshee only perform the services for five Irish families: the O’Neills, the O’Briens, the O’Connors, the O’Gradys, and the Kavanaghs.
Now for the screaming part: it’s not a requirement of a banshee! But that’s sometimes her method of conveying coming death and it’s more of a mourning call than and all out nerve-shattering shriek, which is what we’ve come to equate “screaming like a banshee” with.
For your tween readers, an excellent book which frequently references the banshee — and takes place during the Irish potato famine — is “Nory Ryan’s Song,” by Patricia Reilly Giff.
If you’re going the read-aloud route, may I suggest a box of tissues because by the end, you’ll be crying like a banshee. Oh, you know what I mean.
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