Sexual punishment…

I must confess I find the idea of punishment for failing to achieve a sexual goal in one’s bedroom games most appealing.

prostitution to one man instead of many…

Out of the frying pan into the fire! What is marriage but prostitution to one man instead of many? No different!

 Angela Carter – Nights at the Circus

Books…

Books are the mirrors of the soul.

Virginia Woolf – Between the Acts

Thought for Sunday

the banshee

A distinctly Celtic myth, the banshee crops up in Irish (and in differing forms in Scottish and Welsh) folklore as a mysterious female creature whose scream is said to herald something terrible, or to mark something terrible having already happened – specifically that a member of your family is going to die. There are also tales of soldiers fleeing battlefields after the sound of her ghastly wail. Essentially, if you hear the cry of a banshee, it’s not good news.

It is said that the Irish word banshee comes from the Old Irish for ‘woman of the fairies’ or ‘woman of the fairy mound’: bean sídhe. The banshee, then, is undoubtedly connected to the fairy or spiritual world. Her cry heard in the human realm is a spooky reminder that there are things we cannot understand and – most spooky of all – things we can’t control.

Something I found interesting when it comes to the banshee is that there are differing ideas of what she looks like. Some sources describe her glamorously: a beautiful young woman who tries to lure men with her good looks. Alternatively, she’s depicted as a dishevelled old crone with white hair, a fairy tale archetype of an evil spirit. Of course, a magical woman can only be stupendously beautiful or hideously evil; there is no room for in-betweens in myths. There are also reports of her wearing a cloak and having red eyes, although I’m not sure if that’s from being evil, or from all the crying.

While it seems like she’s described differently in various sources, I also read of her being able to transform between appearances by some accounts. In this way, her outward looks becomes something of an extra power for the banshee – a way to decide on her physicality and choose for herself what best fits the occasion.

Bethany Wren – Bean sídhe: woman of the fairies