The Boy Who Never Was meets the Banshee

As they were standing on the banks of Loch Ness, the Boy Who Never Was stood there watching the Big Foot Yeti, very much at ease with the Loch Ness creature. He crept close to him and asked: “My friend, what kind of religion was there here among the Celts?”

The Yeti tussled his hair and said, “The ancient Celts had wise leaders who practiced a sacred rite that they would execute in rituals beneath old oak trees. Their religious leaders were both men and women called ‘Druids.’ They never wrote down their rites or prayers lest some unworthy person should get a hold of their sacred scripts. Priests, known that the Druids and ladies known as Priestesses, had a secret written language known only to them. It was called Ogham. The letter names of Ogham were interpreted as names of trees or shrubs in manuscript tradition. Out of 20 letter names, only eight were the names of trees.

Training for Priests took nearly twenty years and training for Bards took twice as long because their music and poetry was held to have a magical effect,” the Yeti continued. “All religious training was done through memorization and to be able to induce sleep. Druidic Prophets were known to predict future events by reading animal entrails.

The druids kept the people free from evil, especially away from a harbinger of death and doom, named ‘the Banshee.’ Among the ancient Celts, this fairy spirit was also known as ‘the Hag of the Mist’, ‘the Hag of the Black Head’ and ‘the Little Washerwoman’ Many had seen her washing the bloodstains from the clothes of people who were about to die. The Banshee itself did not cause death but she was like a mirror or a sign that warned that something bad was imminent. The name ‘Banshee’ came from the Old Irish for ‘woman of the fairy mound.’ Her name was connected to various mounds of earth that dotted the countryside.

They were known as ‘tumuli’ and they covered the graves of the dead and they were said to be the homes of spirits in torment. In other Celtic places, large stones over graves were called ‘dolmens’ or ‘menhirs.’ The Banshee would signal her arrival by shrieking or wailing. Among the Celts of Ireland and Scotland, the people practiced a traditional form of vocal laments for the dead. It was called ‘keening.’ In some parts of the world ‘the keeners’ were hired mourners who got to eat from the dead person’s food. These developed into funerary wakes.”

The Boy Who Never Was kept an eye on his dog Gatsby as he listened to the fascinating stories by the Big Foot Yeti. He had no idea how many strange beings seemed to have emerged from this remote spot. His dog seemed to enjoy watching the Loch Ness creature appearing and then disappearing. It seemed a very natural thing for him to do. It occurred to the youth who never was that it was like watching two pet dogs playing together.

The Loch Ness creature would probably survive many more centuries because of his penchant for hiding from curious human beings. Perhaps neither Saints Columba nor Patrick had really rid this place of snakes. Maybe the tale was only symbolic of their efforts to stamp out the old Druidic faith. It could be that these strange creatures were really only the offspring of Typhon and Echidna like the Hydra, Cerberus, the Nemean Lion, the Chimera and Scylla of the ancient Greek myths.

In any case, the Big Foot Yeti seemed to be getting ready to teach the Boy Who Never Was a new lesson. They both disappeared and then reappeared at the foot of a looming mountain crag. It was an eerie place surrounded by tumbledown castles and graves. The Yeti gazed at the Boy Who Never Was, and he said: “Welcome to ancient Wallachia.”