Death Omens 3

Perronick walks through the wood on his way home. He sings as he staggers along the path, hitting stumps and trees that are like traps set by the night for those who do not treat her with proper respect. He grumbles, swears, and kicks the stones to the ground. He relieves himself against a venerable old oak.
  Tapping, voices and splashing of water reach him. He suddenly comes upon a clearing with a pond; its milky-white surface glistens in the dark; six washerwomen stand around it working hard; the tallest calls to him; “Come here and help us wring this sheet!” He is already holding a wet sheet in his hands as an icy shiver invades his body. ...
 Perronick realizes he has cursed himself. He has only one chance of escaping, and that is by always wringing in the opposite direction. If he forgets, the sheet will wind itself round his wrists and tie his arms until they break...his whole body would be crushed and dragged underwater.
 He must resist until morning when dawn will drive them away with the mist. There are two moons in the old ladies’s eyes, two moons dancing, now to the right, now to the left...
 Perronnick was beaten and wrung until his remains and shroud merged into one and dissolved among the lost souls at the bottom of the haunted waters where the Singers of the night dwell.
– Pierre DuBois, La Grand Encyclopédie des Fées.

In Oppidum Urcanum: Beaucaire on the Drac River in Provence Le Drac is held from June 20 to June 22. A large black dragon snakes through the town led by a swarm of children carrying lanterns. The Drac, a shape-shifting winged sea-serpent invisible to humans, abducted a lavender seller in 1250 AD, taking her beneath the waters to raise his son. The Drac gave her a box of dragon cream to rub into the hatchling’s scales so that she could see the bébé drac: baby dragon & care for it. She was supposed to clean the fat off her hands every evening with special water; but, one evening, she forgot, rubbed her eyes with her dirty hands and acquired dragon-sight. When she was released at the end of 7 years, the young woman had the power to see him with one of her eyes. The Drac used a passage from the waters of the Rhône to visit a well in the marketplace. [The Drac is a tributary of Ys-Isère-Isèra River which connects to the Lower Seine-Rhône at Bouches-du-Rhône: Mouth of the Rhône]. When the woman saw him at the Beaucaire market he ripped her eye out [the one-eyed woman symbolizes a goddess]. After the lavender incident, the Drac went on to kill over 3000 crusader knights and villagers, being perhaps one of the craftiest of all French dragons. Whole armies were allegedly sent against the Drac, but all failed. The beast is thus assumed either to have died of old age, or to be still living at the bottom of the Rhône. Still other versions confuse this beast with other monsters of regional folklore, and claim the Drac was slain by some saint or heroine. – Wikipedia: Gervais de Tibury © 1214 et Frédéric Mistral Poèmes du Rhône (35:5)

A crow perching on a house is often the form taken by the Banshee or fairy woman. She comes “in a dark mist to the window of a person who has been long ailing, and to flap her wings against the glass, while repeating aloud his or her name, which was believed to mean that the patient must die [at]..” In the Book of Lismore: Great Stone the bean-sí comes out on Samhain: Summer’s End: Halloween and can fortell the future to men. A fuath (pron foo-a): shapeshifting river fairy part of the race of Fomorian: Those Who Live Under the Sea Giants who live in the realm of Draca. Form green water goblins with yellow manes & tails or old hags who drag humans to their underwater caves to be slaves by floating golden cups & treasures on the surface of the water.

The banshee can be a beautiful, green-eyed, red-haired woman with green dress, red slippers, & grey cloak; or red webbed footed, 1 nostriled, 1 toothed, elderly gray-haired woman in a black skirt washing the clothes of a person who will die. Her crying is called caoine (pron KEEN). She can be defeated by carrying a branch of rowan: quickbeam/quicken or mountain ash and answering 3 riddles. When caught, she must reveal the name of the person who is to die and grant 3 wishes.

The Cyhiraeth of Wales is an old woman with tangled hair, long black teeth, skinny, long shrivelled arms out of proportion to the body. “So it is preferable, as coming probably near the truth, to say that what we have here is a trace of an ancestress. This spectral female used to be oftener heard than seen; but her blood-freezing shriek was as a rule to be heard when she came to a cross-road or to water, in which she splashed with her hands. At the same time she would make the most doleful noise and exclaim, in case the frightened hearer happened to be a wife, Fy ngwr, fy ngwr! 'my husband, my husband!' If it was the man the exclamation would be, Fy ngwraig, fy ngwraig! 'my wife, my wife!' Or in either case it might be, Fy mhlentyn, fy mhlentyn, fy mhlentyn bach! 'my child, my child, my little child!' These cries meant the approaching death of the hearer’s husband, wife, or child, as the case might be; but if the scream was inarticulate it was reckoned probable that the hearer himself was the person foremourned.”

In Brittany she is seen as a trio of night washers dressed in green with webbed duck feet who wash graveclothes at midnight. Those who can survive the night by twisting the sheets the opposite direction of the washers are granted three wishes. Others say you should never answer their questions, approach, or disturb them since they are a death omen. The bean-sí is a soul collector if seen with the Gan Ceann: Without a Head. Her sister is the Leannán Sidhe: Fairy Sweetheart

Fara: Supreme One, Abbess of Bordeaux born blind and healed by the bishop Eustasius with special eye-drops. Her father Count Agneric had her baptised by Saint Columba: Holy Dove. Her feast day is September 6th. The Faroe Islands are named after her. Those who see the Faramie Women in Gironde-Gironda, Bordeaux will die in three days The seat of the Merovingnan Burgundofarones is Meaux. Meldois.

At midnight on January 13th, the end of Yule, Beuffanie of the Dinan Teurdons attracts and drowns all who walk past the Source d’Argeot in L’Isle-sur-Sereine on the Yonne: Yew River (evergreen tree), a tributary of the Seine in Burgundy.

In Faouët, Brocéliande the Night Washers are thin with long white fingers, long white hair, in dresses covered with whitish rags or regional costume. They invite mortals in a state of sin to come and cleanse their souls by washing; redeeming bad deeds on the uneven hours of the night. Those who do not honor the dead are wrung and wrung again so that they cannot be disentangled. Living men have been discovered that way.

 In Provence they are called Poulpikans and wash linen on the banks of the Var and Gapeau river. The druidesses start out beautiful and by midnight they are wrinkled. Christianity transformed them into women guilty of infanticide.

 In Norway the Nixies, weather spirits of winter, live in the Bergen. Frost is a mild winter, fair weather is a bad winter. They are tall, graceful, slender with long white-blonde hair, delicate features who play golden harps and fiddles: a violin they invented whose sound combines metal and gut strings. The men wear red bonnets and blue Renaissance style costumes. The women wear very full white and gold dresses. The fjords lead to the enchanted land of rainbows, sheer cliffs, liquid mists, and cascades lit by sun rays. Walking, reading, and speaking backwards are the ways of entering Faerieland through the back of a mirror. Aes Sídhe, the People of the Hills, or, more shortly, the Sídhe. Every god, or fairy, is a Fer-Sídhe, a Man of the Hill; (pron. Far-shee) and every goddess a Bean-Sídhe, a Woman of the Hill, the banshee of popular legend. – Charles Squire (4, 6, 10, 13, 19, 23, 26, 34, 41, 99, 113, 122, 160: 3, 161, 188, 197, 207)