bibe

See also: Bibe and bibë

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Irish badhb, a variant of badhbh.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /baɪb/
• Rhymes: -aɪb

Noun

bibe (plural bibes)

1. (Ireland, Newfoundland) A type of banshee whose cry indicates someone's impending death.
   • 1822, “All Hallow Eve in Ireland”, in Colburn's New Monthly Magazine and Humorist‎, volume IX, number XV, page 257:

     " […] But when Jack lies on his low death-bed, with the clammy dews standing on his brow, the moaning bibe combing her yellow locks, and singing the death-wail at his casement, then will this, and all poor Delaney's other actions, appear to his darkening eye in their true colours."

   • 1952, Shaw Desmond, Love by the Dark Water, page 11:

     Down there where the Bibe had her hole out of which she would howl to the rising moon and to the fairy peoples that would be peeping out at the new moon only to withdraw their small heads as they heard the cry of the Bibe.

   • 1992, William Nolan, Thomas P. Power, Waterford history & Society, page 628:

     He never believed in the bibe although the people were always talking of her.

   • 2006, Coralie Hughes Jensen, Lety's Gift‎:

     Sophie's face grew serious. "Not the bibe. She comes when we dies."

References

• Story et al. (1990), “bibe”, in Dictionary of Newfoundland English‎, Second Edition with supplement edition, Toronto