Celtic Myth 4, The Washer at the Ford: Creepy and Gruesome Tales

Celtic Myth 4, The Washer at the Ford: Creepy and Gruesome Tales

One common theme of Celtic myth is that of the Washer at the Ford. The war goddess who waited at the ford, sometimes in the form of a woman, sometimes as a crow or a raven, determined which of the warriors who passed would perish on the battlefield that day.

On their way to battle, a band of warriors stopped at a ford, a river crossing, where they beheld a terrible sight. A tall phantom woman, her eyes red and angry, glowered at them through gray, matted hair. At her feet, which were awash with blood, lay the mangled corpses of warriors, some so hideously disfigured that not even their mothers would have recognized them.

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As the warrior band gaped in horror, the woman let out a hideous, shrieking laugh that sent a shiver of terror down their spines. Slowly she raised her arm and pointed a bony finger at each man in turn. At last the chief of the band approached the woman. With much effort, he forced himself to speak. “Who are you?” he asked.

“ I?” she shrieked, ”I am the Morrigan, the Phantom Queen. Some call me the Washer at the Ford. My work is to haunt all the streams of Ireland, washing away all the sins of men.”

“Who, then,” asked the band’s war chief, “are the sinful men who lie in this gory heap before us? Are they those you have killed and maimed today?”

The Morrigan cackled again. “I did not kill these men, nor have I so much as harmed a hair on their heads!” She peered deep into the warrior’s eyes. “Look again at the dead warriors. They are the very men that stand behind you, as they will be this evening, after the battle. I am merely washing the blood from their limbs.”

The chieftain looked again at the corpses, and began to make out the features of some of the comrades accompanying him. The Morrigan slowly bent down to rummage among her gory bounty, then held up an object for the chief to see. He turned to look and beheld, dangling by bloody locks, his own severed head.

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