She who loved
war had also to love
death, to celebrate it in a howling
ectasy of
grief and
lamentation. Some chroniclers maintained that, among the
Morrigan's three incarnations, it was the elusive and enigmatic Neman who first devised the art of
keening.
This ritual wailing was the music that accompanied the spirits of the dead to their final home. Torn first from the throats of newlymade widows, the singing of these songs of loss became the perogative of a sorority of black-clad crones. When the wagon loads of corpses trundled back from the fields of battle, the mourner's ululations filled the sky and drowned out the winds howling in from the sea.
It was said that whenever carrion birds screamed to one another over the bodies of the fallen, the voice of the Morrigan was heard in the land.