Etymology

dullahan

D2U1L1L1A1H4A1N1

Today it means: A black-clad (usually male) horserider in Irish folklore which carries its severed head like a lantern and may be repelled by gold; when it stops riding (or calls out someone's name), someone will die. (Also called the Gan Ceann, Irish for "[one] without a head".) Full definition →

Irish dulachán
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The story

  1. Irish · borrowed fromdulachán
  2. English todaydullahan

From Irish dulachán, from dubh (“black”) + another word (compare lucharachán (“elf, dwarf”)), possibly originally a term for a dark or sullen person (compare the surname Dullahan) and only subsequently applied to the spirit.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.