The Bean Nighe

In the dead of night, Gille-cas-fliuch was making his way home across Benbecula when he saw somebody ahead of him at the stepping stones.

Her name translates as the Wet-foot Man, an attendant of Great Clanranald whose duties involved carrying his chief across burns and other wet ground, so a late journey near water was presumably nothing unusual. The woman waiting at the ford was another matter.

She was washing and rinsing a small shroud while she moaned over the person it belonged to. Gille-cas-fliuch did not turn around. Instead, he crept up behind her and caught her.

Alexander Carmichael recorded the story in Carmina Gadelica, where the washerwoman immediately complains about being held and, rather wonderfully, insults the smell of his beard while doing so. He refuses to release her until she agrees to three requests: she must tell him whose shroud she is washing, help him obtain the wife of his choosing and ensure a plentiful supply of seaweed for his township.

Her answer to the first request is the important one.

The shroud belongs to Great Clanranald of the Isles. Gille-cas-fliuch throws it into the loch on the point of his spear and runs home to warn his chief. Clanranald immediately has a cow killed so that a small hide-covered boat can be made, leaves the island and never returns to Dun-buidhe.

According to the tale, that is how he escaped the death that had been waiting for him at the ford.

I have several thoughts, but the first is that a small woman washing somebody's death shroud in the middle of the night would concern me.

SHE WAS THE WASHER AT THE FORD

The Bean Nighe belongs to Scottish Gaelic tradition and was particularly associated with the Highlands and Hebrides. Her name simply means washing woman or washerwoman, while other names recorded for her include nigheag, the little washer, and nigheag na h-àth, the little washer of the ford.

John Gregorson Campbell described her in 1900 as a form of fairy woman seen beside lonely pools or streams, washing and beating the linen of people who were soon to die. Seeing her was therefore an omen, although not necessarily an announcement of the witness's own death. The useful question, if one can call anything about this useful, was whose clothing she had in her hands.

That is what makes the image so effective. There is nothing extraordinary about washing clothes beside running water in the world these stories came from. The unsettling part arrives when the ordinary action acquires a different purpose.

She is not removing yesterday's dirt. She is washing for somebody who will soon have no need of the clothes at all.

Cheery.

NOBODY COULD QUITE AGREE WHAT SHE LOOKED LIKE

There was no standard Bean Nighe, and the descriptions recorded from different parts of Scotland are wonderfully inconsistent.

In Skye, Campbell was told she was squat and small, resembling a pitiful little child. Perthshire tradition made her small and round, dressed in green and spreading winding sheets by moonlight. In Mull and Tiree, however, the account becomes considerably stranger: she was said to have enormously long breasts which interfered with her washing, so she threw them backwards over her shoulders.

I realise we have gone from sad little washerwoman to that remarkably quickly.

The variation is useful because it reminds us that the Bean Nighe was not a literary character with a fixed appearance. These accounts came through oral tradition, changing from island to island and storyteller to storyteller. Her face, size and clothing could alter completely while the essential scene remained recognisable.

Find a strange woman washing at a lonely stretch of water, particularly if blood or funeral linen is involved, and your evening has probably taken an unfortunate turn.

WAS THE CORRECT RESPONSE TO GET CLOSER?

This is where traditional advice and my own instinct’s part company.

Campbell recorded that in Mull and Tiree a person who saw the Bean Nighe should not retreat. They were supposed to approach from behind without being noticed and seize her.

I cannot say I would be approaching, wishes or not.

There was, however, something to gain from taking the risk. If caught before she noticed the person coming, she could be compelled to reveal information about the future, including the identity of whoever was going to die. In the Benbecula story collected by Carmichael, capture brought three requests, which is how Gille-cas-fliuch secured the information about Clanranald.

The Skye version added another complication. The person who captured her could ask about their future, but they also had to answer her questions truthfully. If she noticed them before they reached her, Campbell was told they might lose the use of their limbs.

So, the procedure was essentially to sneak up on a supernatural death omen before she saw you, restrain her and hope the conversation went your way.

There are easier ways to spend an evening.

THE FOSTER-MOTHER BUSINESS REQUIRES SOME EXPLANATION

The method recorded from Mull and Tiree becomes even more peculiar once the person reaches her.

Campbell wrote that the captor was supposed to seize one of the Bean Nighe's long breasts, put it in his mouth and declare her his first nursing or foster-mother. Having established that relationship, she was then obliged to give him the information he wanted.

I have read this several times and remain no more comfortable with it.

There is at least some cultural logic behind the strangeness. Fosterage carried considerable importance in Gaelic society, creating relationships and obligations beyond the immediate biological family. Milk-kinship could therefore signify a bond that was taken seriously rather than being a random detail invented solely to make future readers stare at the page, with a screwed up face.

Nevertheless, folklore has taken us from spotting someone doing laundry to putting a supernatural breast in your mouth with very little warning.

No notes.

KNOWING THE FUTURE COULD SOMETIMES CHANGE IT

Campbell's account contains one particularly interesting detail. If the shirt being washed belonged to an enemy, the person who had captured the Bean Nighe could allow her to continue and the foretold death would follow. If the garment belonged to the witness or someone they cared about, however, the washing could be stopped.

Carmichael's story of Clanranald does something similar. Gille-cas-fliuch learns who the shroud belongs to, throws it into the loch and rushes away to warn him. Clanranald leaves Benbecula and, within the logic of the tale, avoids whatever fate had been awaiting him there.

That makes the Bean Nighe more interesting than a straightforward prophecy.

She reveals something that is supposed to happen, yet certain stories leave room for intervention once the warning has been understood. Fate has prepared the laundry, but the paperwork may not be final.

SOMETIMES SHE WAS A DEAD WOMAN HERSELF

One of Campbell's explanations for the Bean Nighe is considerably sadder than the rest.

Women who died in childbirth were regarded as having died before their natural time. According to a belief he recorded, if the clothing they left behind had not all been washed, they were required to continue washing until the point at which their natural lives would otherwise have ended. These dead women were said to be among the washerwomen encountered beside the water.

It changes the scene completely.

The figure at the ford is no longer simply a supernatural messenger carrying news of somebody else's death. She may be a woman whose own life ended too early, condemned to continue one of the most ordinary domestic tasks imaginable throughout the years she should have been alive.

Folklore could have given her chains, flames or some elaborate punishment from the Otherworld. Instead, she has washing.

SOMETIMES YOU HEARD HER BEFORE YOU SAW HER

Campbell also recorded the sound of the Bean Nighe beating clothes as an important part of the tradition. In Skye, a person might hear her working before seeing her, and the outcome depended on who noticed whom first. Catch her unawares and information might be obtained; allow her to see you first and the encounter could leave you unable to use your limbs.

That may be the detail I find most unsettling.

Imagine walking near a burn at night and hearing the repetitive slap of wet cloth against stone somewhere ahead. It is a completely recognisable sound, which is precisely why it works. Nothing has appeared. Nothing is chasing you. You know only that somebody is doing washing in a place and at a time when nobody ought to be doing washing.

Then you have to decide whether to investigate.

I already know my answer.

THE FORD IS EXACTLY WHERE SHE SHOULD BE

This is the third article on this shelf and once again we have ended up beside water.

Selkies come out of the sea. Kelpies and water-horses belong to rivers, pools and lochs. The Bean Nighe waits beside a stream or at a ford.

I do not think we need to force one grand explanation onto all of them, but the landscape matters. Water was necessary to ordinary life and capable of becoming dangerous without much warning. A ford also has the additional quality of being a crossing point, somewhere between one bank and another.

The Bean Nighe occupies that space while doing something equally in-between. The person whose clothes she washes is still alive, but their death has already entered the story.

They have not crossed yet, but she is preparing for when they do.

I WOULD RATHER NOT KNOW

The kelpie offers a fairly manageable piece of advice once you know the story: do not climb onto unexplained horses beside deep water.

The Bean Nighe is worse.

She is not hunting anybody. She does not need to lure you into the stream or chase you across the hills. By the time you encounter her, she is already working.

Somewhere there is a person going about an entirely ordinary day while their clothes are being washed at the ford. You could creep closer, catch her and ask who they belong to. Gaelic folklore even gives you methods for doing it, although some of them are considerably more intimate than I am willing to contemplate.

I think I would leave her alone.

If I ever find a small woman washing blood from clothing in a Highland burn at dusk, I will not be asking for three wishes, demanding information about the future or attempting to establish a foster relationship.

Whatever she knows can remain between her and the laundry.