IRISH BEAN-FIONN (WATER WOMAN)

The Bean-Fionn is a watery female fairy. She is known to wear a white gown and lives beneath lakes and streams. She has been known to give directions to lost travelers. She will, however, drown those who displease her or hurt children. Her favorite pastime is to drag under and drown children who play or work in or near the water.

In Germany she is called the Weisse Frau and she is somewhat more benevolent than her Irish version. The Weisse Frau is very protective of children, and a kiss from her renders a child almost indestructible. In England she is called Jenny Greentooth or the Greentoothed Woman, which has become a generic name for these types of drowning faeries in English-speaking countries.

The Bean-Fionn may be one of those fairy forms which exists not as a whole being, but as an incomplete thought-form created by the collective fears of persons past. In fact, she may have been created by parents who wished to warn their children away from dangerous lakes and rivers.