In Hebridean (heb-rih-DEE-un) folklore, this activity is performed by spirits who may have breasts that they throw over their shoulders while working. For 10 points each:
[10h] Name this activity at the center of a Celtic mytheme in which old women performing it at midnight ask passersby to help, killing those who comply exactly and granting wishes to those who do it in a different fashion.
ANSWER: washing clothes [or doing laundry; accept the midnight washerwomen; or laundresses; or Les Lavandières] (Twisting the clothes in the opposite way from the washerwomen leads to them granting you wishes.)
[10e] The bean-nighe (ban NEE-yuh) who wash the clothes of those who are about to die in Scottish and Irish folklore are a subtype of this more general kind of female spirits, who shriek and wail to herald death.
ANSWER: banshee [or bean sidhe; or bean sí; or ben síde; prompt on sidhe]
[10m] Washerwomen spirits in this region are called kannerezed noz (“can”-ner-EH-zed “nose”), meaning “night ducks,” for their webbed feet. A princess from this region steals a gate key from her father Gradlon to bring a lover home, with disastrous consequences.
ANSWER: Brittany [or Bretagne; or Breizh; or Bertaèyn; prompt on France; prompt on Ys by asking “what region is that in?”] (The disaster is that their city, Ys, sinks beneath the ocean.)
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