This rather obscure name is used in Cardiganshire for the Welsh banshee, sometimes called 'y Cyhiraeth'. She would go invisibly beside the person she wished to warn, and if she came to cross-roads or to a stream she would burst out into a ghastly shriek, beating the ground or the water and crying out, 'My husband! My husband!' if she was accompanying a woman, or, 'My wife!' if a woman's death was foretold. Or again, 'My little child! O my little child!' if it was a child who would die. Inarticulate screams meant the death of the hearer himself. She was described as very hideous, with tangled hair, long black teeth and long withered arms out of all proportion to the length of her body. Rhys, who gives this description of her in Celtic Folk-Lore (Vol.II, pp.452-355), considers that she is generally regarded as an ancestral figure, but thinks it possible that she may be one of the mother goddesses, like Anu or the Cailleach Bheur.

[Motif: M301.6.1]