The Celtic Spirit World
Filed by Aine MacDermot
Her most intimate task appears to lie in the entertainment of visitors, upon whom, however, she occasionally plays ghostly pranks. Some glaistigs, like that of the Macleans of Breachacha Castle, in the Island of Coll, made life rather difficult for occasional guests, while others, such as that of the MacDougalls of Dunoffie, acted as amateur laundresses, washing the family linen. But other glaistigs are more fiendishly inspired and plague the hunter or crofter. Some spirits of this species insist upon a cogue of milk being set out for them at nights, and if this offering be neglected the cattle are almost certain to suffer. If one could capture a glaistig he might exact from her the gift of particular skill in handicraft for his descendants. One could keep a glaistig at ann’s length with a drawn dirk, but if permitted to come to close quarters she might assume the attributes of the vampire and suck his veins dry. The glaistig occasionally took the form of a man’s sweetheart, and in this form might absorb his heart’s blood. That she was substantially an ancestral spirit is dear enough. Libations of milk were made to her in a hollow stone, and at one farm, Sron-charmaig, on the side of Loch Fascan, in Lorn, this custom was upheld so lately as the nineties of tat century. (25)
The bean-nighe is “the washing-woman”, whose legend has been immortalized by Fiona MacLeod, that occasionally brilliant if somewhat theatrical master of the pseudo-Celtic, in his gruesome tale The Washer at the Ford. She is common to both Scotland and Ireland. Tradition avers that she is to be seen after nightfall in desolate places near a water’s edge, or at a ford, washing the shrouds of those who are about to die. In the main, she is confined to the larger islands of Scotland - Lewis, Harris, Uist and Coil - where her appearance is regarded as a warning of death. But her presence is not unrecorded elsewhere, although her name varies with the region. Thus in Islay the coin-teach and the bean-nighe seem to be one and the same. The cointeach of Islay is said to be particularly vindictive to those who disturb her at her dreadful business, and she punishes them by striking them on the legs with the shroud she is washing - a blow which may possibly amputate these members.
In the Hebrides the bean-nighe is not attached to particular families. She is said to resemble a woman of small size, and some emphasis is laid on the fact that her feet are red and webbed like a duck’s. Like the banshee, she sometimes sports green attire. The usual seasons for her appearance are after dark and in the early morning. The noise she makes at her work is described as like “the clapping of hands” and the splashing of water. Though evil follows upon the sight of her, that, we are told, is no fault of hers. If one can get between her and the water she is bound to grant any request or boon he may ask.
In Perthshire the washing-woman is described as small of stature and rotund, and clad in a muslin-like green garment. In Skye she is squat and resembles a shrunken, rather miserable-looking child. If caught while at her labours she is bound to reveal the circumstances of her captor’s fate, so long as he truthfully responds to her questions in turn. (26)
In Ross-shire and Sutherlandshire the bean-nighe is locally known as the vow. Her favourite locality is the River Carron. Those who-seek to cross the waters which she haunts do so at the risk of their lives. She washes clothes in the same manner as the bean-nighe, and is sometimes identified with the kelpie. But, as the vow, she is not a Lowland equivalent of the bean-nighe, as has been stated. “In Carradale, in Kintyre, is a point called Sroin na h-Eannachair, the haunt of a supernatural being who makes an outcry on the death of any of the clan MacMillan. Cannachan is the local name for the cointeach of the MacMillans. The word seems to be associated with ponds or water.”
Such a creature haunted a loch in the Alvie district of Inverness-shire, but could be seen only by those about to die. The local belief concerning her was that she represented the phantom of a mother who had died in childbed, and whose garments had not been washed at the time of her burial. Accordingly she seems to have been doomed to wash the shifts of all those about to die, or to be slain in battle between the date of her actual death and that on which she would naturally have died, death at childbirth being deemed unnatural.
Joy Sweeney wrote:
Dear Sir,
My grandmother, who was from Derry, Ireland saw the banshee just prior to her sister, Josephine’s, death many years ago. My grandmother lived in Florida and Josephine was living in Canada. My grandmother said she first heard the banshee wailing loudly and mournfully outside her door. Then she saw the old woman in white in a horse-driven carriage going by her house. She noted the date and time and later found out that her sister had died around the same time. My grandmother was a MacDonagh.
No one else in our family has seen the banshee.
Posted on 15-Jun-05 at 2:36 pm | Permalink
ed malvey wrote:
i was wondering where you got the name chapel of st. malvey i can trace my family name back to 1734 in ireland county cork
Posted on 10-Aug-05 at 12:14 am | Permalink
Aine MacDermot wrote:
It’s not me that got that name, this article is The Celtic Spirit World
by Lewis Spence
from ‘The Magic Arts in Celtic Britain’
(chapter VII)
Posted on 10-Aug-05 at 12:18 am | Permalink
ed malvey wrote:
i dont want to be a pest but do you have any idea about the origin of the chapel of st malvey?
Posted on 10-Aug-05 at 1:26 am | Permalink
Aine MacDermot wrote:
You’re not being a pest. And, no, I don’t know the origin of the chapel of St. Malvey. Sounds like a good topic for you to research, though (considering your last name).
Posted on 10-Aug-05 at 1:40 am | Permalink
Mirela Sevenich-Walter wrote:
Dear Sir,
my grandparents lived in Croatia. They have been born in a little village by the name Seona.
It´s an unusually name for a croatic village.
I can remember that ma granny teach me then I was a child a lot of fairys.
She believed in them and the other older pupil in the village , too.
I have heard stories about fairies in this village.
My granny says they always lived there with the people helped them or punished them.
She tells me, if I don´t lost the faith in them, one day I would see the fairies, too.
In the wood of this village is a spring and there was an old man living. The people called him brother John.
He lives like an eremit allone and he was praying for the ill people. He was healing the humans.
My grandmother shaws me the place there the fairies were dancing in the ring.
She gives me so lot my granny and I beginn to understand now.
Three months ago I became the idea to search about the name Seona in Slavonia (Croatia).
This is a name from scotish gaellic and comes from the name Seonaid (God is great).
I´m sure that in Seona the celts build one of them first villages, then they come to Croatia.
All this I tell a Dr. of archeollogy in Zagreb and he writes me back, that he has found some celtic graves and this story from me can be a way to find something more about our history.
Today,if you ask me if I believe in fairiey, yes do.
Why?
So I am catholic, but my grandmother tells me that god is great, he lives everythere and I can talk with him also in the nature.
I grove up with the belive in god and the fairies.
I loved them and talked to them, too. I see them as my sisters in soul.
Sometimes I can here them singing in the wood or crying on places there bads thing happening.
They are real the fairies. My granny says if the humans lost the faith they can´T never see the fairies again.
One day I was so tired, I hear voices from the door like children laughing. I think my children are coming home with my husband, but it was a litle green ghost.
He was small ,like a child from 6 years.
I can´t see a face only circle on his head with symbols like celtic art. He talks somthing to me, but I don´t understand. It was a language warm and deep. The louds sounds like drrhh, krch, shhr, chaarhh,,, somthing like this.
On the top of the wall from my room something litle flyes. They looked like small white princes and they laughed all time. The voice of them sounds like children laughing.
I have open my ices and I was thinking I´m dreaming, but in the next second I feel how thr little green ghost take my plaid from the bed and takes it over me. I was falling in a deep sleep.
Then I awaked I have feel so good. I never sleeped better.
It was a good feeling. This I will never forgett.
Bye, from Germany, yours Mirela
Posted on 20-Sep-06 at 6:33 am | Permalink
ed makvey wrote:
It’s been quite a while but I found out some info about St. Malvey the real name of the church is St Moluag’s church (locally known by its gaidhlig name of Teampull Mholuaidh) is a 13th Century temple in the village of Eoropie in Ness in the Isle of Lewis
Posted on 18-Jan-08 at 8:50 pm | Permalink
Tom Malvey wrote:
I have documentation on the church from a journal written by Charles Dickens in 1887. He calls it the church of St Malvey. I traced him back to 590 AD. He and St Columba et al were called the disciples of Ireland. I think you might be Molly’s son, brother Jimmy now Father Seamus, and my cousin.
Posted on 29-Jan-08 at 11:01 am | Permalink