#46: Banshee

The Cru welcome back PC Nottingham and introduce Beanbag, the prodigal son of the pod. Our thrilling, chilling autumn continues with spooky tales of mushrooms, Felacius Suckarus, the hubris of the fae, a last motorcycle ride, the hopefulness of good works, and Grief, who comes for us all. From The Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and Legend: banshee Literally and originally, a woman of the side or fairy folk, in Irish folklore usually appearing as a beautiful woman weeping (and thus foretelling) the death of someone, often a member of a specific family. She is usually associated with the primitive earth goddess of the district which she haunts. (See AINE.) The banshee appears either as a beautiful maiden weeping the coming death or as a gruesome hag foretelling it. She is often identified with the Washer Of The Ford, who is seen at a ford washing bloody garments by one about to die. She is also often associated with the White Ladies of other folklores, partly because of her function as a foreteller of death, and partly because of the etymological confusion between bdn, meaning fair, white-haired, and ban-, a prefix meaning woman, or the actual bean side, woman of the side. Stories begin around the 9:20 mark.Like this weeks episode and wish you could read as well as listen? Subscribe to our Substack for a summary of our opening discussion, a story from the episode, and a writing prompt!  Be sure to follow us on Instagram (if that's your sort of thing). Please do send us an email with your story if you write along, which we hope you will do. Episodes of Radio FreeWrite are protected by a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0) license. All Stories remain the property of their respective authors.