Badb

the crow or raven is her characteristic form: she is met on the battlefield as a bird

She incites warriors and stirs confusion or panic among armies, and her cry or appearance is treated as an omen of the slaughter to come; the wider tradition around her and the related war-goddess figures includes the "washer at the ford" motif, a woman seen washing bloodied garments or armor by a river as a sign that the owner is fated to die, which compilers regularly attach to this cluster of goddesses.

She incites warriors and stirs confusion or panic among armies, and her cry or appearance is treated as an omen of the slaughter to come; the wider tradition around her and the related war-goddess figures includes the "washer at the ford" motif, a woman seen washing bloodied garments or armor by a river as a sign that the owner is fated to die, which compilers regularly attach to this cluster of goddesses.

She figures in accounts of major legendary battles, appearing over the field in bird form, and in some tellings is described uttering prophecy once a battle is won or lost, giving the event its place in a larger pattern of doom and triumph rather than leaving it as a single occurrence. The sources that carry her — Lady Gregory's retelling, Briggs's and Leach's reference dictionaries, Rose's compilation — draw on the same underlying medieval Irish material and largely agree on her outline, but the boundary between Badb, the Morrígan and Macha is handled inconsistently from one compilation to the next, with some treating them as one goddess under three names and others as three goddesses who share a domain.

Her name is generally understood to mean something like "battle-crow" or "scald-crow," and the crow or raven is her characteristic form: she is met on the battlefield as a bird, and her presence there marks the field as hers.