After luncheon, which he sat down to alone, as the girl, despite his pressing invitation, refused to partake of the meal with him, on the plea that she had many things to attend to, he went a little way up the hillside at the back of the premises, and enjoyed a quiet siesta under the shadow of the trees. Indeed, he slept so long that the twilight had well set in before he awoke and once again made tracks for the inn.
This time he entered by a doorway in the rear of the house, and, in a small paved courtyard, saw the girl, habited in a rather more workaday attire,but with her hair still very coquettishly decorated with ribbons, sharpening a long glistening knife on a big grinding stone, which she was turning round and round with the skill of a past mistress of the art.
“Hulloa!” he exclaimed. “What are you up to? Not sharpening that blade to stick me with, I hope.”
“The Señor has heard of pigs,” the girl replied, showing her beautiful teeth in a smile, almost amounting to a grin. “Well, I’m going to kill one to-night.”
“Good heavens!” Ralph ejaculated, glancing incredulously at the white, rounded arms and the long, slim, tapering fingers. “You kill a pig! Do you do all the work of this house? Is there no one else here to help you?”
“Oh, yes, Señor,” the girl laughed. “There is Isabella, an old woman who comes here every day to do all the hard rough work, and my aunt, but there are certain jobs they can’t do because their eyesight is not very good, and their hands lack the skill. The gentleman looks shocked, but is there anything so very dreadful in killing a pig? One slash and it is quickly done—very quickly. We have to live somehow, and, after all, the Señor is a soldier—he follows the vocation of killing!”
“Oh, yes, it is all very well for big, rough men.One somehow associates them with deeds of violence and bloodshed. But with beautiful, dainty girls like you it is different. You should shudder at the very thought of blood, and be all pity and compassion.”
“But not for pigs,” the girl laughed, “nor for Señors. Now please go in and sit in the parlour, or my aunt will hear me talking to you and accuse me of wasting my time.”
Ralph reluctantly obeyed, and drawing his chair close up to the parlour fire—for the summer evenings in Spain are often very chilly—was soon deeply absorbed in plans and speculations as to the future. After supper, when the young girl came into the room to clear the table, Ralph noticed that she was once again wearing the gay apparel she had worn earlier in the day; and all in red, even to the ribbons in her hair, she seemed to be dressed more coquettishly than ever. She was also inclined to be more communicative, and in response to Ralph’s invitation to partake of a glass of wine with him, she fetched an armchair and came and planted it close beside him.
Pretty as he had thought her before, she now appeared to him to be indescribably lovely, and the longer he stared at her, stared into the depths of her large, beautifully shaped purplish grey eyes, the more and more hopelessly enslaved didhe become, till, in the end, he realised she had him completely at her mercy, and that he was most madly and desperately in love with her.
They drank together, and so absorbed was he in gazing at her eyes—indeed he never ceased gazing at them—that he did not observe what he was drinking or how many times she filled up his glass. If she had given him a poisoned goblet, it would have been all the same, he would have drained it off and kissed her hands and feet with his dying breath.
“Now, Señor,” she said at length, after he had held her hand to his lips and literally smothered it in kisses, “now, Señor, it is time for you to go to bed. We do not keep late hours here, and to-morrow, Señor, if he is still in the same state of mind, will have plenty of time for repeating to me his sentiments.”
“To-morrow,” Ralph stuttered. “To-morrow, that is a tremendous way off, and isn’t it to-morrow that that fellow O’Flanagan is coming?”
The girl laughed. “Yes,” she said saucily, “there will be two of you to-morrow, the one as bad as the other, and I did think, Señor, you were the steadier of the two. Well, well, you are both soldiers, and soldiers were ever gay dogs; but you must be careful, Señor, you and your friend do not quarrel, for, as you know, more than onefriendship has been terminated through the witching glance of a lady’s eyes, and you both seem to like looking into mine.”
“What!” Ralph stuttered angrily. “Did that fellow Dick look at you? Did he dare to look at you? Damn——” but before he could utter another syllable, the girl put her soft little hand over his mouth and pushed him gently to the door.
Alternately making wild love to her and passionately denouncing Dick, Ralph then allowed himself to be got upstairs to his room by pushes and coaxings, and, as he made a last frantic effort to kiss and fondle her, the door slammed in his face and he found himself—alone.
For some moments he stood tugging and twisting at the door handle, and then, finding that his efforts had no effect, he was staggering off to the bed with the intention of getting into it just as he was, when he caught his foot on something and fell with a crash to the floor, striking his face smartly on the edge of a chair. For a moment or so he was partially stunned, but, the flow of blood from his nose relieving him, he gradually came to his senses, all trace of his drunkenness having completely vanished. The first thing he did then was to look at the carpet which, by a stroke of luck, was crimson, a most pronounced, virulent crimson, exactly the colour of his blood. Thespot where he had fallen was close to the bed, and, as his eyes wandered along the carpet by the side of the bed, he fancied he saw another damp patch. He at once fetched the candle and had a closer look.
Yes, there was a great splash of moisture on the floor, near the head of the bed, just about in a line with the pillow. He applied his finger to the patch and then held it to the light—it was wet with blood.
Filled with a sickening sense of apprehension, Ralph now proceeded to make a careful examination of the room, and, lifting the lid of a huge oak chest that stood in one corner, he was horrified to perceive the naked body of a man lying at the bottom of it, all huddled up.
Gently raising the body and bending down to examine it, Ralph received a second shock. The face that looked up at him with such utter lack of expression in its big, bulging, glassy eyes was that of the once gay and humorous Dick O’Flanagan.
The manner of his death was only too obvious. His throat had been cut, not cleanly as a man would have done it, but with repeated hacks and slashes, that pointed all too clearly to a woman’s handiwork.
This then explained it all, explained the curioussomething in the girl’s eyes and mouth he had noticed when he first saw her; explained, too, the stealthy, tiptoeing footsteps in the passage that night, the reason for the appearance of the Banshees, the eagerness with which the girl had plied him with wine, her red dress—and—the red carpet.
But why had she done it—for mere sordid robbery, or because they were Carlists. Then recollecting the look she had fixed on the ruby in Dick’s ring, the answer seemed clear. It was, of course, robbery. Snake-like, she used those beautiful eyes of hers to fascinate her victims—to lull them into a false sense of security; and then, when they had wholly succumbed to love and wine, of which she gave them their fill, she butchered them.
Murders in Spanish inns were by no means uncommon about that time, and even at a much later date, and had this murder been committed by some old and ugly and cross-grained “host,” Ralph would not have been surprised, but for this girl to have done it—this girl so young and enchanting, why it was almost inconceivable, and he would not have believed it, had not the grim proofs of it lain so close at hand. What was he to do? Of course, now that he was sober and in the full possession of his faculties, it was ridiculousfor him to be afraid of a girl, even though she were armed; but supposing she had confederates, and it was scarcely likely she would be alone in the house.
No, he must try and escape; but how! He examined the window, it was heavily barred; he tried the door, it was locked on the outside; he looked up the chimney, it was far too narrow to admit the passage of anyone even half his size.
He was done, and the only thing he could do was to wait. To wait till the girl tiptoed into the room to kill, and then—he couldn’t bear the idea of fighting with her, even though she had so cruelly murdered poor Dick—make his escape.
With this end in view he blew out the candle, and, lying on the bed, pretended to be fast asleep.
In about an hour’s time he heard steps, soft, cautious footsteps, ascend the staircase and come stealing surreptitiously towards his door. Then they paused, and he instinctively knew she was listening. He breathed heavily, just as a man would do who had drunk not wisely but too well, and had consequently fallen into a deep sleep. Presently, there was a slight movement of the door handle.
He continued breathing, and the movement was repeated. Still more stentorian breaths, and the handle this time was completely turned. Verygently he crept off the bed to the door, and, as it slowly opened and a figure in red, looking terribly ghostly and sinister, slipped in, so he suddenly shot past and made a bolt for the passage. There was a wild shriek, something whizzed past his head and fell with a loud clatter on the floor, and all the doors in the house downstairs seemed to open simultaneously. Reaching the head of the stairs in a few bounds, he was down them in a trice. A hideous old hag rushed at him with a hatchet, whilst another aged creature, whose sex he could not determine, aimed a wild blow at him with some other instrument, but Ralph avoided them both, and, reaching the front door, which providentially for him was merely locked, not bolted, he was speedily out of the house and into the broad highway.
The screams of the women producing answering echoes from the wood in the hoarser shouts of men, Ralph took to his heels, nor did he stop running until he was well on his way to Trijello.
He did not, however, go to the latter town, fearing that the inn people might follow him there and get him arrested as a Carlist; instead, he struck off the high road along a side path, and, luckily for him, about noon fell in with an advanced guard of the Carlist Army.
His troubles then, for a time at least, ceased;but to his lasting regret he was never able to avenge Dick’s death; for when the war was at last over and he had succeeded in persuading the local authorities to take the matter in hand, the inn was found to be empty and deserted. Nor was the pretty murderess ever seen or heard of again in that neighbourhood.
Although the Banshee haunting referred to in my last chapter occurred during a war, the manifestations did not take place on the battle-field; nor were they actually due to the fighting. At the same time it cannot be denied that they were the outcome of it, for had our two lieutenants not been fighting desperately in a skirmish and got separated from the main body of the Army, in all probability they never would have visited the wayside inn, and the Banshee manifestations there would never have occurred.
There are, however, many instances on record of Banshee manifestations occurring on the battle-field, either immediately before or after, or even whilst the fighting was actually taking place. Mr McAnnaly, in his “Irish Wonders,” p. 117, says:
“Before the Battle of the Boyne, Banshees were heard singing in the air over the Irish camp, the truth of the prophecy being verified by the death roll of the next morning.”
Now several of my own immediate ancestors took part in the Battle of the Boyne,[10]and according to a family tradition one of them both saw and heard the Banshee. He was sitting in the camp, the night prior to the fighting, conversing with several other officers, including his brother Daniel, when, feeling an icy wind coming from behind and blowing down his back, he turned round to look for his cloak which he had discarded a short time before, owing to the heat from a fire close beside them. The cloak was not there, and, as he turned round still further to look for it, he perceived to his astonishment the figure of a woman, swathed from head to foot in a mantle of some dark flowing material, standing a few feet behind him. Wondering who on earth she could be, but supposing she must be a relative or friend of one of the officers, for her mantle looked costly, and her hair—of a marvellous golden hue—though hanging loose on her shoulders, was evidently well cared for, he continued to gaze at her with curiosity. Then he gradually perceived that she was shaking—shaking all over, with what he at first imagined must be laughter; but from the constant clenching of her hands and heavingof her bosom, he finally realised that she was weeping, and he was further assured on this point, when a sudden gust of wind, blowing back her mantle, he caught a full view of her face.
Its beauty electrified him. Her cheeks were as white as marble, but her features were perfect, and her eyes the most lovely he had ever seen. He was about to address her, to inquire if he could be of any service to her, when, someone calling out and asking him what on earth he was doing, she at once began to melt away, and, amalgamating with the soft background of grey mist that was creeping towards them from the river, finally disappeared.
He thought of her, however, some hours later, when they were all lying down, endeavouring to snatch a few hours’ sleep, and presently fancied he saw, in dim, shadowy outline, her fair face and figure, her big, sorrowful eyes, gazing pitifully first at one and then at another of his companions, but particularly at one, a mere boy, who was lying wrapped in his military cloak, close beside the smouldering embers of the fire. He fancied that she approached this youths and, bending over him, stroked his short, curly hair with her delicate fingers.
Thinking that possibly he might be asleep and dreaming, he rubbed his eyes vigorously, but theoutlines were still there, momentarily becoming stronger and stronger, more and more distinct, until he realised with a great thrill that she actually was there, just as certainly as she had been when he had first seen her.
He was so intent watching her and wishing she would leave the youth and come to him, that he did not notice that one of his comrades had seen her, too, until the latter, who had raised himself into a half-sitting posture, spoke; then, just as before, the figure of the girl melted away, and seemed to become absorbed in the dark and shadowy background.
A moment later, he heard, just over his head, a loud moaning and wailing that lasted for several seconds and then died away in one long, protracted sob that suggested mental anguish of an indescribably forlorn and hopeless nature.
The deaths of most of his companions of the night, including that of the curly haired boy, occurred on the following day.
But the Banshee, although of course appearing to soldiers of Irish birth only, does not confine its attentions to those who are fighting on their native soil; it has been stated that she frequently manifested herself to Irishmen engaged on active service abroad during the Napoleonic Wars, and also to those serving in America during the Civil War.
With regard to the Banshee demonstrations in connection with the Napoleonic campaigns, I have not been able to acquire any written record; but as the result of numerous letters sent out by me broadcast in quest of information, I was asked by several people to call either at their houses or clubs, and, gladly accepting their invitations, I learned from them the incidents which, with their permission, I am now about to relate.
Miss O’Higgins, an aged lady, residing, prior to the late war, close to Fifth Avenue, New York, and visiting, when I met her, a friend in the Rue Campagne Première, Paris, told me that she well remembered her grandfather telling her when she was a child that he heard the Banshee at Talavera, a day or two prior to the great battle. He was serving with the Spanish Army, having married the daughter of a Spanish officer, and had no idea at the time that there were any men of Irish extraction in his corps. Bivouacking with about a hundred other soldiers in a valley, and happening to awake in the night with an ungovernable thirst, he made his way down to the banks of the river that flowed near by, drank his fill, and was in the act of returning, when he was startled to hear a most agonising scream, quickly followed by another, and then another, all proceeding apparently from the camp, whither he was wendinghis steps. Wondering what on earth could have happened, and inclining to the belief that it must be in some way connected with one of those women thieves who prowled about everywhere at night, robbing and murdering, with equal impunity, wherever they saw a chance, he quickened his pace, only to find, on his arrival at the camp, no sign whatever of the presence of any woman, although the screaming was going on as vigorously as ever. The sounds seemed to come first from one part of the camp, and then from another, but to be always overhead, as if uttered by invisible beings, hovering at a height of some six or seven feet, or, perhaps, more, above the ground, and although Lieutenant O’Higgins had at first attributed these sounds to one person only, on listening attentively he fancied he could detect several different voices—all women’s—and he eventually came to the conclusion that at least three or four phantasms must have been present. As he stood there listening, not knowing what else to do, the wailing and sobbing seemed to grow more and more harrowing, until it affected him so much that, hardened as he had become to all kinds of misery and violence, he, too, felt like weeping, out of sheer sympathy. However, this state of affairs did not last long, for at the sound of a musket shot (that of a sentry, as LieutenantO’Higgins afterwards ascertained, giving a false alarm in some distant part of the camp) the wailing and sobbing abruptly and completely ceased, and was never, the Lieutenant declared, heard by him again.
On mentioning the matter to one of his brother officers in the morning, the latter, no little interested and surprised, at once said: “You have undoubtedly heard the Banshee. Poor D——, who fell at Corunna, often used to tell me about it, and, you may depend upon it, there are some Irishmen in camp now, and it was their funeral dirge that you listened to.”
What he said proved to be quite correct, for, on inquiring, Lieutenant O’Higgins discovered three of the soldiers who had been sleeping around him that evening had Irish names, and were, unquestionably, of ancient Irish origin; and all of them perished on the bloody field of Talavera, twenty-four hours later.
A story relating to an O’Farrell, who was with the Spanish in the same war, was also told me by Miss O’Higgins; but whether this O’Farrell was the famous general of that name or not I do not know. The story ran as follows:[11]
It was the day prior to the fall of Badajoz, and O’Farrell, who was in Badajoz at the time, aprisoner of the French, was invited to partake of supper with some Spanish-Irish friends of his of the name of McMahon. The French, it may be observed, were, as a rule, rather more lenient to their Irish prisoners than to their English, and O’Farrell was allowed to ramble about Badajoz in perfect freedom, a mere pledge being extracted from him that he wouldn’t stroll outside the boundaries of the town without special permission. On the night in question O’Farrell left his quarters in high spirits. He liked the McMahons, especially the youngest daughter Katherine, with whom he was very much in love. He deemed his case hopeless, however, as Mr McMahon, who was poor, had often said none of his daughters should marry, unless it were someone who was wealthy enough to ensure them being well provided for, should they be left a widow; and as O’Farrell had nothing but his pay, which was meagre enough in all conscience, he saw no prospect of his ever being able to propose to the object of his affections. Had he been strong-minded enough, he told himself, he would have at once said good-bye to Katherine, and never have allowed himself to see or even think of her again; but, poor weakling that he was, he could not bear the idea of taking a final peep into her eyes—the eyes that he had idealised into his heaven andeverything that made life worth living for—and so he kept accepting invitations to their house and throwing himself across her path, whenever the slightest opportunity presented itself.
And now he found himself once more speeding to meet her, telling himself repeatedly that it should be the last time, but at the same time making up his mind that it should be nothing of the sort. He arrived at the house far too early, of course—he always did—and was shown into a room to wait there till the family had finished their evening toilets. Large glass doors opened out of the room on to a veranda, and O’Farrell, stepping out on to the latter, leaned over the iron railings, and gazed into the semi-courtyard, semi-garden below, in the centre of which was a fountain surmounted by the marble statue of a very beautiful maiden, that his instinct told him was an exact image of his beloved Katherine. He was gazing at it, revelling in the delightful anticipation of meeting the flesh and blood counterpart of it in a very short time, when sounds of music, of someone playing a very, very sad and plaintive air on the harp, came to him through the open doorway. Much surprised, for none of the family as far as he knew were harpists, nor had he, indeed, ever seen a harp in the house, he turned round; but, to add to his astonishment, no one was there.The room was apparently just as empty as when he had been ushered into it, and yet the music unquestionably emanated from it. Considerably mystified, for every now and then there was a peculiar far-offness in the sounds which he could liken to nothing he had ever heard before, he remained on the veranda, prevented by a strange feeling of awe, and something very akin to dread, from venturing into the room.
He was thus occupied, half standing and half leaning against the framework of the glass door, when the harping abruptly ceased, and he heard moanings and sobbings as of a woman suffering from paroxysms of the most intense and violent grief. Combatting with a great fear that now began to seize him, he summed up the resolution to peep once more into the room, but though his eyes took in the whole range of the room, he could perceive no spot where anyone could possibly be in hiding, and nothing that would in any way account for the sounds. There was nothing in front of him but walls, furniture, and—space. Not a living creature. What then caused those sounds? He was asking himself this question, when the door opened, and Mr McMahon, followed by Katherine and all of the other girls, came into the apartment; and, with their entry, the strange sounds at once ceased.
“Why, what’s the matter, Mr O’Farrell,” the girls said, laughingly. “You are as white as a sheet and trembling all over. You haven’t seen a ghost, have you?”
“I haven’t seen anything,” O’Farrell retorted, a trifle nettled at their gaiety, “but I’ve heard some rather extraordinary sounds.”
“Extraordinary sounds,” Katherine laughed. “What on earth do you mean?”
“Just what I say,” O’Farrell remarked. “When I was on the veranda just now I distinctly heard the sound of a harp in this room, and shortly afterwards I heard a woman weeping.”
“It must have been someone outside in the street,” Mr McMahon observed hastily, at the same time giving O’Farrell a warning glance from his dark and penetrating eyes. “We do occasionally receive visits from street musicians. I have something to say to you about the English and their rumoured new attack on the town,” and drawing O’Farrell aside he whispered to him: “On no account refer to that music again. It was undoubtedly the Banshee, the ghost that my forefathers brought over from Ireland, and it is only heard before some very dreadful catastrophe to the family.”
The following day Badajoz was stormed and entered by the English, and in the wild scenesthat ensued, scenes in which the drunken English soldiery got completely out of hands, many Spanish—Spanish men and women—perished, as well as French, and among the casualties were the entire McMahon family.
Talking of phantom music, there is a widespread belief among Celtic races that whenever it is heard proceeding from the sea, either a death or some other great calamity is prognosticated. Such a belief is very prevalent along the coasts of Scotland, Wales, and Cornwall, and Mr Dyer, in his “Ghost World,” p. 413, refers to it in Ireland. “Sometimes,” he says, “music is heard at sea, and it is believed in Ireland that, when a friend or relative dies, a warning voice is discernible.” To what extent this music is connected with Banshee hauntings it is, of course, impossible to say; but I have known cases in which it has owed its origin to the Banshee and to the Banshee only.
During the Civil War in America, for example, a transport of Confederate soldiers was making for Charlestown one evening, when a young Irish officer, who was leaning over the bulwarks and gazing pensively into the sea, was astonished tohear the very sweetest sounds of music coming from, so it seemed to him, the very depths of the blue waters. Thinking he must be dreaming, he called a brother officer to his side and asked him if he could hear anything.
“Yes,” the latter responded, “music, and what is more, singing. It is a woman, and she is singing some very tender and plaintive air. How the deuce do you account for it?”
“I don’t know,” the young Irishman replied, “unless it is the Banshee, and it sounds very like the description of it that my mother used to give me. I only hope it does not predict the death of any one of my very near relatives.”
It did not do that, but oddly enough, and unknown to him at the time, a namesake of his, whom he subsequently discovered was a second cousin, stood not ten yards from him at the very moment he was listening to the music, and was killed in action in a sortie from Charlestown on the following day.
A story of a similar nature was told me in Oregon by an old Irish Federal soldier, who was in the temporary employ of an apple merchant at Medford, Jackson County. I don’t in any way vouch for its truth, but give it just as it was related to me.
“You ask me if I have ever come across anyghosts in America. Well, I guess I have, several, and amongst others the Banshee. Oh, yes, I am Irish, although I speak with the nasal twang of the regular Yank. Everyone does who has lived in the Eastern States for any length of time. It’s the climate. My name, however, is O’Hagan, and I was born in County Clare; and though my father was only a peasant, I’m a darned sight more Irish than half the people who possess titles and big estates in the old country to-day.
“I emigrated from Ireland with my parents, when I was only a few weeks old, and we settled in New York, where I was working as a porter on the quays when the Civil War broke out. Like me, the majority of Irishmen who, as you know, are always ready to go wherever there’s the chance of doing a bit of fighting, I at once enlisted in the Marines, for I was passionately fond of the sea, and in due course of time was transferred to a gunboat that patrolled the Carolina Coast on the lookout for Confederate blockade runners. Well, one night, shortly after I had turned in and was lying in my hammock, trying to get to sleep, which was none too easy, for one of my mates, an ex-actor, was snoring loud enough to wake the whole ship, I suddenly heard a tapping on the porthole close beside me. ‘Hello,’ says I to myself, ‘that’s an odd noise. It can’t be the water, nor yet thewind; maybe it’s a bird, a gull or albatross,’ and I listened very attentively. The sound went on, but it had none of that hardness and sharpness about it that is occasioned by a beak, it was softer and more lingering, more like the tapping of fingers. Every now and then it left off, to go on again, tap, tap, tap, until, at last, it unnerved me to such an extent that I jumped out of my hammock and had a peep to see what it was. To my astonishment I saw a very white face pressed against the porthole, looking in at me. It was the face of a woman with raven black hair that fell in long ringlets about her neck and shoulders. She had big golden rings in her ears, that shone like anything as the moonbeams caught them, as did her teeth, too, which were the loveliest bits of ivory I have ever seen, absolutely even and without the slightest mar.
“But it was her eyes that fascinated me most. They were large, not too large, however, but in strict proportion to the rest of her face, and as far as I could judge in the moonlight, either blue or grey, but indescribably beautiful, and, at the same time, indescribably sad. As I drew nearer, she shrank back, and pointed with a white and slender hand at a spot on the sea, and then suddenly I heard music, the far-away sound of a harp, proceeding, so it seemed to me, from about theplace she had indicated. It was a very still night, and the sounds came to me very distinctly, above the soft lap, lap of the water against the vessel’s side, and the mechanical squish, squish made by the bows each time they rose and fell, as the ship gently ploughed her way onwards. I was so intent on listening that I quite forgot the figure of the woman with the beautiful face, and when I turned to look at her again, she had gone, and there was nothing in front of me but an endless expanse of heaving, tossing, moonlit water. Then the music ceased, too, and all was still again, wondrously still, and feeling unaccountably sad and lonely—for I had taken a great fancy to that woman’s face, the only what you might term really lovely woman’s face that had ever looked kindly on me—I got back again into my hammock, and was soon fast asleep. On my touching at port, the first letter I received from home informed me of the death of my father, who had died the same night and just about the same time I had seen that fairy vision and heard that fairy music.
“When I told my mother about it, some long time afterwards, she said it was the Banshee, and that it had haunted the O’Hagan family for hundreds and hundreds of years.”
This, as I have already said, is merely a trooper’s story, unconfirmed by anyone else’s evidence, and,of course, not up to the standard of S.P.R. authority. Yet, I believe, it was related to me in perfect sincerity, and the narrator had nothing whatever to gain through making it up. I did not even offer him a chew of tobacco, for at that moment I was pretty nearly, if not, indeed, quite as hard up as he was himself.
And now, before I finish altogether with Banshee hauntings that are associated with war, I feel I must refer to a statement in Mr McAnnaly’s book, “Irish Wonders,” to the effect that when the Duke of Wellington died, the Banshee was heard wailing round the house of his ancestors. This statement does not, in my opinion, bear inspection. I am quite ready to grant that some kind of apparition—perhaps a family ghost he had inherited from one or other of his Anglo-Irish ancestry—was heard lamenting outside the domain in question; but as the family to whom the Duke belonged could not be said to be of even anything approaching ancient Irish extraction, I cannot conceive it possible that the disturbances experienced were in any way due to the genuine Banshee.
To revert to the sea, and Banshee haunting. On the coast of Donegal there is an estuary called “The Rosses,” and this at one time was said to be haunted by several kinds of phantoms, includingthe Banshee, which was reported to have manifested itself on quite a number of occasions.
Under the heading of “An Irish Water-fiend,” Bourke, in his “Anecdotes of the Aristocracy” (i. 329), relates the following case of a ghostly happening there, which, although not due to a Banshee, is so characteristic of Irish supernatural phenomena that I cannot refrain from quoting it.
In the autumn of 1777 the Rev. James Crawford, rector of the parish of Killina, County Leitrim, was riding on horseback with his sister-in-law, Miss Hannah Wilson, on a pillion behind him, along the road leading to the “The Rosses,” and, on reaching the estuary, he at once proceeded to cross it. After they had gone some distance, Miss Wilson, noticing that the water touched the saddle laps, became so alarmed that she cried out and besought Mr Crawford to turn the horse round and get back to land as quickly as possible.
“I do not think there can be danger,” Mr Crawford answered, “for I see a horseman crossing the ford not twenty yards before us.”
To this Miss Wilson, who also saw the horseman, replied:
“You had better hail him and inquire the depth of the intervening water.”
Mr Crawford at once did so, whereupon the horseman stopped and, turning round, revealed aface distorted by the most hideous grin conceivable, and so frightfully white and evil that the luckless clergyman promptly beat a retreat, and made no attempt to check the mad haste of his panicked steed till he had left the estuary many miles behind him.
On arriving home he narrated the incident to his wife and family, and subsequently learned that the estuary was well known to be haunted by several phantoms, whose mission was invariably the same, either to foretell the doom by drowning of the person to whom they appeared, or else to actually bring about the death of that person by luring them on and on, until they got out of their depth, and so perished.
One would have thought that Mr Crawford, after the experience just narrated, would have given the estuary a very wide berth in future; but no such thing. He again attempted to cross the ford of “The Rosses” on 27th September, 1777, and was drowned in the endeavour.
Among many thrilling and (so it struck me at the time) authentic stories told me in my youth by a Mrs Broderick, a well-known vendor of oranges and chocolate in Bristol, were several stirring accounts of the Banshee. I was at the time a day boy at Clifton College, residing not very far from the school, and Mrs Broderick, whoused to visit our house every week with her wares, took a particular interest in me because I was Irish—one of “the real old O’Donnells.” She was a native of Cork, and had, I believe, migrated from that city in theJuno, an old cattle boat, that for more than twenty years plied regularly every week between Cork and Bristol carrying a handful of passengers, who, for the cheapness of the fare, made the best of the rolling and tossing and extremely limited space allotted for their accommodation. In later years I often travelled to and from Dublin and Bristol in theArgo, theJuno’ssister ship, so I speak feelingly and from experience. But to proceed with Mrs Broderick’s Banshee stories.
The one containing an account of a Banshee haunting on the sea I will narrate in this chapter, and the other, which has no connection with either sea or river, I will deal with later on.
Before I commence either story, however, I would like to say that though Mrs Broderick spoke with a rich brogue and was really Irish, she used few, if any, of those words and expressions that certain professors of the Dublin Academic School apparently consider inseparable from the speech of the Irish peasant class. I cannot, for example, remember her ever saying Musha, or Arrah, or Oro; and, as for Erse, Iam quite certain she did not know a word of it. Yet, as I have said, she was Irish, and far more Irish than many of the Gaelic scholars of to-day who, insufferably proud of their knowledge of the Celtic tongue, bore one stiff by their feeble and futile attempts to acquire something of the real Irish wit and proverbial humour.
Mrs Broderick did not often speak of her parents; they were, I fancy, peasants, or, perhaps, what we should term “small farmers,” and from what I could gather they lived, at one time, in a little village just outside Cork; but Mrs Broderick was, she told me, very fond of the sea, and often, when a girl, walked into Cork and went out boating with her young friends in Queenstown harbour.
On one occasion, she and another girl and two young men went for a sail with an old fisherman they knew, who took them some distance up the coast in the direction of Kinsale. There had been a slight breeze when they started, but it dropped suddenly as they were tacking to come back home, and since the sails had to be taken down and oars used, both the young men volunteered to row. Their offer being accepted by the old fisherman, they pulled away steadily till they espied an old ship, so battered and worn away as to be little more than a mere shell, lyinghalf in and half out of the water in a tiny cove. Then, as the weather was beautifully fine and no one was in a hurry to get home, it was proposed that they pull up to the wreck and examine it. The old fisherman demurred, but he was soon won over, and the two young men and Mrs Broderick’s girl friend boarded the old hulk, leaving Mrs Broderick and the old fisherman in the boat. The shadows from the trees and rocks had already manifested themselves on the glistening shingles of the beach, and a glow, emanating from the rapidly rising moon and myriads of scintillating stars that every moment shone forth with increased brilliancy, showed up every object around them with startling distinctness.
Always in her element in scenes of this description, Mrs Broderick was enjoying herself to the utmost. Leaning on the side of the boat and trailing one hand in the water, she drank in the fresh night air, redolent with the scent of flowers and ozone. She could hear her friends talking and laughing as they tried to steady themselves on the sloping boards of the old hulk; and presently, one of them, O’Connell, proposed that they should descend below deck and explore the cabins. Then their voices gradually grew fainter and fainter, until eventually all was still, save for the lapping of the sea against the sides of the boat,and the gentle ripple of the wavelets as they broke on the beach, and the occasional far-away barkings of a dog—noises that somehow seem to belong to summer more than to any other period of the year.
Mrs Broderick’s memory, awakened by these sounds, travelled back to past seasons, and she was depicting some of the old scenes over again, when all at once, from the wreck, from that side of it, so it seemed to her, that was partly under water, there rang out a series of the most appalling screams, just like the screams of a woman who had been suddenly pounced upon and either stabbed, or treated in some equally savage and violent manner.
Mrs Broderick, of course, at once thought of her friend, Mary Rooney, and, clutching the boatman by the arm, she exclaimed:
“The Saints above, it’s Mary. They’re murdering her.”
“’Tis no woman, that,” the old boatman said hoarsely. “’Tis the Banshee, and I would not have had this have happened for the whole blessed world. I with my mother so ill in bed with the rheumatism and a cold she got all through her with sitting out on the wet grass the night before last.”
“Are you sure?” Mrs Broderick whispered, clutching him tighter, whilst her teeth chattered.“Are you sure it isn’t Mary, and they are not killing her?”
“Sure,” replied the boatman, “that’s the way the Banshee always screams—’tis her, right enough, ’tis no human woman,” and like the good Catholic that he was, he crossed himself, and, dipping the oars gently into the water, he began to pull slowly and quietly away.
By and by the screaming ceased, and a moment later the three explorers came trooping on to the deck, showing no signs whatever of alarm, and when questioned as to whether they had heard anything, laughingly replied in the negative.
“Only,” O’Connell added facetiously, “the kiss Mike Power stole from Mary. That was all.”
But for O’Connell that was not all. When he arrived home he found that during his absence his mother had died suddenly, and, in all probability, at the very moment when Mrs Broderick and the boatman had heard the Banshee.
No country besides Ireland possesses a Banshee, though some countries possess a family or national ghost somewhat resembling it. In Germany, for example, popular tradition is full of rumours of white ladies who haunt castles, woods, rivers, and mountains, where they may be seen combing their yellow hair, or playing on harps or spinning. They usually, as their name would suggest, wear white dresses, and not infrequently yellow or green shoes of a most dainty and artistic design. Sometimes they are sad, sometimes gay; sometimes they warn people of approaching death or disaster, and sometimes, by their beauty, they blind men to an impending peril, and thus lure them on to their death. When beautiful, they are often very beautiful, though nearly always of the same type—golden hair and long blue eyes; they are rarely dark, and their hair is never of that peculiar copper and golden hue that is socommon among Banshees. When ugly, they are generally ugly indeed—either repulsive old crones, not unlike the witches in Grimm’s Fairy Tales, or death-heads mockingly arrayed in the paraphernalia of the young; but their ugliness does not seem to embrace that ghastly satanic mockery, that diabolical malevolence that is inseparable from the malignant form of Banshee, and which inspires in the beholders such a peculiar and unparalleled horror.
It is not my intention in this work to do more than briefly refer to a few of the most famous of the German hauntings in their relation to the Banshee; and, since it is the best known, I would first of all call attention to the White Lady, that restricts its unwelcome attentions to Royalty, and more especially, perhaps, to that branch of it known as the House of Hohenzollern. Between this White Lady family phantasm and the Banshee there is undoubtedly something in common. They are both exclusively associated with families of really ancient lineage, which they follow about from town to town, province to province, and country to country; and the purpose of their respective missions is generally the same, namely, to give warning of some approaching death or calamity, which in the case of the White Lady is usually of a national order.
Occasionally, too, the German family ghost, like the Banshee, is heard playing on a harp, but here I think the likeness ends. There are no very striking characteristics in the appearance of the White Lady of the Hohenzollerns, she would seem to be neither very beautiful nor the reverse; nor does she convey the impression of belonging to any very remote age; on the contrary, she might well be the earth-bound spirit of someone who died in the Middle Ages or even later.
In December, 1628, she was seen in the Royal Palace in Berlin, and was heard to say, “Veni, judica vivos et mortuos; judicum mihi adhuc superest”—that is to say, “Come judge the quick and the dead—I wait for judgment.” She also manifested herself to one of the Fredericks of Prussia, who regarded her advent as a sure sign of his approaching death, which it was, for he died shortly afterwards. We next read of her appearing in Bohemia at the Castle of Neuhaus. One of the princesses of the royal house was trying on a new head-gear before a mirror, and, thinking her waiting-maid was near at hand, she inquired of her the time. To the Princess’s horror, however, instead of the maid answering her, a strange figure all in white, which her instincts told her was the famous national ghost, stepped out from behind a screen and exclaimed, “Zehn uhr ist es irhLiebden!” “It is ten o’clock, your love”; the last two words being the mode of address usually adopted in Germany and Austria by Royalties when speaking to one another. The Princess was soon afterwards taken ill and died.
A faithful account of the appearance of the White Lady was published inThe Iris, a Frankfort journal, in 1829, and was vouched for by the editor, George Doring. Doring’s mother, who was companion to one of the ladies at the Prussian Court, had two daughters, aged fourteen and fifteen, who were in the habit of visiting her at the Palace. On one occasion, when the two girls were alone in their mother’s sitting-room, doing some needlework, they were immeasurably surprised to hear the sounds of music, proceeding, so it seemed to them, from behind a big stove that occupied one corner of the apartment. One girl got up, and, taking a yard measure, struck the spot where she fancied the music was coming from; whereupon the measure was instantly snatched from her hand, the music, at the same time, ceasing. She was so badly frightened that she ran out of the room and took refuge in someone else’s apartment.
On her return some minutes later, she found her sister lying on the floor in a dead faint. On coming to, this sister stated that directly the other had quitted the apartment, the music had begunagain and, not only that, but the figure of a woman, all in white, had suddenly risen from behind the stove and began to advance towards her, causing her instantly to faint with fright.
The lady in whose house the occurrence took place, on being acquainted with what had happened, had the flooring near the stove taken up; but, instead of discovering the treasure which she had hoped might be there, a quantity of quick-lime only was found; and the affair eventually getting to the King’s ears, he displayed no surprise, but merely expressed his belief that the apparition the girl had seen was that of the Countess Agnes of Orlamunde, who had been bricked up alive in that room.
She had been the mistress of a former Margrave of Brandenburg, by whom she had had two children, and when the Margrave’s legitimate wife died the Countess hoped he would marry her. This, however, he declined to do on the plea that her offspring, at his death, would very probably dispute the heirship to the property with the children of his lawful marriage. The Countess then, in order to remove this obstacle to her union, poisoned her two children, which act so disgusted the Margrave that he had her walled up alive in the room where she had committed the crimes. The King went on to explain that the phantasmappeared about every seven years, but more often to children, to whom it was believed to be very much attached, than to adults.
Against this explanation, however, is the more recent one that the White Lady is Princess Bertha or Perchta von Rosenberg. This theory is founded on the discovery of a portrait of Princess Bertha, which was identified by someone as the portrait of the White Lady whom they had just seen.
In support of this theory it was pointed out that once when certain charities which the Princess had stated in her will should be doled out annually to the poor were neglected, not only was the White Lady seen, but music and all kinds of other sounds were heard in the house where the Princess had died. Very possibly, however, in neither of these theories is there any truth, and the secret of the White Lady’s activity lies in some subtle and, perhaps, entirely unsuspected fact. It is, I think, quite conceivable that she is no earth-bound soul, but some impersonating elemental, which—like the Banshee—has, for some strange and wholly inexplicable reason, attached itself to the unfortunate Hohenzollerns, and their relatives and kinsmen.
Ballinus and Erasmus Francisci, in their published works, give numerous accounts of theappearance of this same apparition; whilst Mrs Crowe asserts that it was seen shortly before the publication of her “Night Side of Nature.” It would be interesting to know whether it appeared to the ex-Kaiser Wilhelm, or to any of his family, before this last greatest and most signally disastrous of all wars.
William Brereton in his “Travels” (i. 33) gives rather a different description of this ghost. He says that the Queen of Bohemia told him “that at Berlin—the Elector of Brandenberg’s house—before the death of anyone related in blood to that house, there appears and walks up and down that house like unto a ghost in a white sheet, which walks during the time of their sickness until their death.”
In this account it will be noticed that there is no mention of sex, so that the reader can only speculate as to whether the apparition was the ghost of a man or a woman. Its appearance, however, according to this account, strongly suggests a ghost of the sepulchral and death-head type—an ordinary species of elemental—which suggestion is not apparent in any other description of it that we have hitherto come across. Other ancient German and Austrian families, besides those of the ruling houses, possess their family ghosts, and here again, as in the parallelcase of the Irish and their Banshee, the family ghost of the Germans or Austrians is by no means confined to the “White Lady.” In some cases of German family haunting, for example, the phenomenon is a roaring lion, in others a howling dog; and in others a bell or gong, or sepulchral toned clock striking at some unusual hour, and generally thirteen times. In all instances, however, no matter whether the family ghost be German, Irish, or Austrian, the purpose of its manifestations is the same—to predict death or some very grave calamity.[12]
In the notes to the 1844 edition of Thomas Crofton Croker’s “Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland,” we find this paragraph taken from the works of the Brothers Grimm and manuscript communications from Dr Wilhelm Grimm:
“In the Tyrol they believe in a spirit which looks in at the window of a house in which a person is to die (Deutsche Sagen, No. 266), the White Woman with a veil over her head answers to the Banshee, but the tradition of the Klage-weib (mourning woman) in the Lünchurger Heath (Spiels Archiv. ii. 297) resembles it more. On stormy nights, when the moon shines faintly through the fleeting clouds, she stalks of giganticstature with death-like aspect, and black, hollow eyes, wrapt in grave clothes which float in the wind, and stretches her immense arm over the solitary hut, uttering lamentable cries in the tempestuous darkness. Beneath the roof over which the Klage-weib has leaned, one of the inmates must die in the course of a month.”
In Italy there are several families of distinction possessing a family ghost that somewhat resembles the Banshee. According to Cardau and Henningius Grosius the ancient Venetian family of Donati possess a ghost in the form of a man’s head, which is seen looking through a doorway whenever any member of the family is doomed to die. The following extract from their joint work serves as an illustration of it:
“Jacopo Donati, one of the most important families in Venice, had a child, the heir to the family, very ill. At night, when in bed, Donati saw the door of his chamber opened and the head of a man thrust in. Knowing that it was not one of his servants, he roused the house, drew his sword, went over the whole palace, all the servants declaring that they had seen such a head thrust in at the doors of their several chambers at the same hour; the fastenings were found all secure, so that no one could have come in from without. The next day the child died.”
Other families in Italy, a branch of the Paoli, for example, is haunted by very sweet music, the voice of a woman singing to the accompaniment of a harp or guitar, and invariably before a death.
Of the family ghost in Spain I have been able to gather but little information. There, too, some of the oldest families seem to possess ghosts that follow the fortunes, both at home and abroad, of the families to which they are attached, but with the exception of this one point of resemblance there seems to be in them little similarity to the Banshee.
In Denmark and Sweden the likeness between the family ghost and the Banshee is decidedly pronounced. Quite a number of old Scandinavian families possess attendant spirits very much after the style of the Banshee; some very beautiful and sympathetic, and some quite the reverse; the most notable difference being that in the Scandinavian apparition there is none of that ghastly mixture of the grave, antiquity, and hell that is so characteristic of the baleful type of Banshee, and which would seem to distinguish it from the ghosts of all other countries. The beautiful Scandinavian phantasms more closely resemble fairies or angels than any women of this earth, whilst the hideous ones have all the grotesqueness and crude horror of the witches of Andersen or Grimm. There is nothing aboutthem, as there so often is in the Banshee, to make one wonder if they can be the phantasms of any long extinct race, or people, for example, that might have hailed from the missing continent of Atlantis, or have been in Ireland prior to the coming of the Celts.
The Scandinavian family ghosts are frankly either elementals or the earth-bound spirits of the much more recent dead. Yet, as I have said, they have certain points in common with the Banshee. They prognosticate death or disaster; they scream and wail like women in the throes of some great mental or physical agony; they sob or laugh; they occasionally tap on the window-panes, or play on the harp; they sometimes haunt in pairs, a kind spirit and an evilly disposed one attending the fortunes of the same family; and they keep exclusively to the very oldest families. Oddly enough at times the Finnish family ghost assumes the guise of a man. Burton, for example, in his “Anatomy of Melancholy,” tells us “that near Rufus Nova, in Finland, there is a lake in which, when the governor of the castle dies, a spectrum is seen in the habit of Orion, with a harp, and makes excellent music, like those clocks in Cheshire which (they say) presage death to the masters of the family; or that oak in Lanthadran Park in Cornwall, which foreshadows so much.”
I will not dwell any longer, however, on Scandinavian ghosts, as I purpose later on to publish a volume on the same, but will pass on to the family apparitions of Scotland, England, and Wales.
Beginning with Scotland, Sir Walter Scott was strong in his belief in the Banshee, which he described as one of the most beautiful superstitions of Europe. In his “Letters on Demonology” he says: “Several families of the Highlands of Scotland anciently laid claim to the distinction of an attendant spirit, who performed the office of the Irish Banshee,” and he particularly referred to the ghostly cries and lamentations which foreboded death to members of the Clan of MacLean of Lochbery. But though many of the Highland families do possess such a ghost, unlike the Banshee, it is not restricted to the feminine sex, nor does its origin, as a rule, date back to anything like such remote times. It would seem, indeed, to belong to a much more ordinary species of phantasm, a species which is seldom accompanied by music or any other sound, and which by no means always prognosticates death, although on many occasions it has done so.
In addition to the MacLean, some of the best known cases of Scottish family ghosts are as follows:
The Bodach au Dun, or Ghost of the Hills, which haunts the family of Grant Rothiemurcus, and the Llam-dearg, or spectre of the Bloody Hand, which pursues the fortunes of the Clan Kinchardine. According to Sir Walter Scott in the Macfarlane MSS. this spirit was chiefly to be seen in the Glenmore, where it took the form of a soldier with one hand perpetually dripping with blood. At one time it invariably signalled its advent in the manner which, I think, has no parallel among ghosts—it challenged members of the Kinchardine Clan to fight a duel with it, and whether they accepted or not they always died soon afterwards. As lately as 1669, says Sir Walter Scott, it fought with three brothers, one after another, who immediately died therefrom.
Then there is the Clan of Gurlinbeg which is haunted by Garlin Bodacher; the Turloch Gorms who, according to Scott, are haunted by Mary Moulach, or the girl with the hairy left hand;[13]and the Airlie family, whose seat at Cortachy is haunted by the famous drummer, whose ghostly tattoos must be taken as a sure sign that a member of the Ogilvie Clan—of which the Earl of Airlie is the recognised head—will die very shortly.
Mr Ingram, in his “Haunted Houses andFamily Legends,” quotes several well authenticated instances of manifestations by this apparition, the last occurring, according to him, in the year 1899, though I have heard from other reliable sources that it has been heard at a much more recent date. The origin of this haunting is generally thought to be comparatively modern, and not to date further back than two or three hundred years, if as far, which, of course, puts it on quite a different category from that of the Banshee, though its mission is, without doubt, the same. According to Mr Ingram, a former Lord Airlie, becoming jealous of one of his retainers or emissaries who was a drummer, had him thrust in his drum and hurled from a top window of the castle into the courtyard beneath, where he was dashed to pieces. With his dying breath the drummer cursed not only Lord Airlie, but his descendants, too, and ever since that event his apparition has persistently haunted the family.
Other Highland families that possess special ghosts are a branch of the Macdonnells, that have a phantom piper, whose mournful piping invariably means that some member or other of the clan is shortly doomed to die; and the Stanleys who have a female apparition that signalises her advent by shrieking, weeping, and moaning before the death of any of the family. Perhaps of allScottish ghosts this last one most closely resembles the Banshee, though there are distinct differences, chiefly with regard to the appearance of the phantoms—the Scottish one differing essentially in her looks and attire from the Irish ghost—and their respective origins, that of the Stanley apparition being, in all probability, of much later date than the Banshee.
Then, again, there is the Bodach Glas, or dark grey man, in reference to which Mr Henderson, in his “Folk-lore of Northern Countries,” p. 344, says: “Its appearance foretold death in the Clan of ——, and I have been informed on the most credible testimony of its appearance in our own day. The Earl of E——, a nobleman alike beloved and respected in Scotland, was playing on the day of his decease on the links of St Andrew’s at golf. Suddenly he stopped in the middle of the game, saying, ‘I can play no longer, there is the Bodach Glas. I have seen it for the third time; something fearful is going to befall me.’ That night he fell down dead as he was giving a lady her candlestick on her way up to bed.”
Another instance, still, of a Scottish family ghost is that of the willow tree at Gordon Castle, which is referred to by Sir Bernard Bourke in his “Anecdotes of the Aristocracy.” Sir Bernardasserts that whenever any accident happens to this tree, if, for example, a branch is blown down in a storm, or any part of it is struck by lightning, then some dire misfortune is sure to happen to some member of the family.
There are other old Scottish family ghosts, all very distinct from the Banshee, though a few bear some slight resemblance to it, but as my space is restricted, I will pass on to family ghosts of a more or less similar type that are to be met with in England.
To begin with, the Oxenhams of Devonshire the heiress of Sir James Oxenham, and the bride that is invariably seen before the death of any member of the family. According to a well-known Devonshire ballad, a bird answering to this description flew over the guests at the wedding of the heiress of Sir James Oxenham, and the bride was killed the following day by a suitor she had unceremoniously jilted.
The Arundels of Wardour have a ghost in the form of two white owls, it being alleged that whenever two birds of this species are seen perched on the house where any of this family are living, some one member of them is doomed to die very shortly.
Equally famous is the ghost of the Cliftons of Nottinghamshire, which takes the shape of asturgeon that is seen swimming in the river Trent, opposite Clifton Hall, the chief seat of the family, whenever one of the Cliftons is on the eve of dying.
Then, again, there is the white hand of the Squires of Worcestershire, a family that is now practically extinct. According to local tradition this family was for many generations haunted by the very beautiful hand of a woman, that was always seen protruding through the wall of the room containing that member of the family who was fated to die soon. Most ghost hands are said to be grey and filmy, but this one, according to some eye-witnesses, appears to have borne an extraordinary resemblance to that of a living person. It was slender and perfectly proportioned, with very tapering fingers and very long and beautifully kept filbert nails—the sort of hand one sees in portraits of women of bygone ages, but which one very rarely meets with in the present generation.
Other families that possess ghosts are the Yorkshire Middletons, who are always apprised of the death of one of their members by the appearance of a nun; and the Byrons of Newstead Abbey, who, according to the great poet of that name, were haunted by a black Friar that used to be seen wandering about the cloisters and otherparts of the monasterial building before the death of any member of the family.
In England, there seems to be quite a number of White Lady phantoms, most of them, however, haunting houses and not families, and none of them bearing any resemblance to the Banshee. Indeed, there is a far greater dissimilarity between the English and Irish types of family ghosts than there is between the Irish and those of any of the nations I have hitherto discussed.
Lastly, with regard to the Welsh family ghosts, Mr Wirt Sikes, in his “British Goblins,” quite erroneously, I think, likens the Banshee in appearance to the Gwrach y Rhibyn, or Hag of the Dribble, which he describes as hideous, with long, black teeth, long, lank, withered arms, leathern wings, and cadaverous cheeks, a description that is certainly not in the least degree like that of any Banshee I have ever heard of. He goes on to add that it comes in the stillness of the night, utters a blood-curdling howl, and calls on the person doomed to die thus: “Da-a-a-vy! De-i-i-o-o-ba-a-a-ch.” If it is in the guise of a male it says, in addition, “Fy mlentyn, fy mlentyn bach!” which rendered into English is, “My child, my little child”; but if in the form of a woman, “Oh! Oh! fy ngwr, fy ngwr”—“My husband! my husband!” As a rule it flaps its wings againstthe window of the room in which the person who is doomed is sleeping, whilst occasionally it appears either to the ill-fated one himself or to some member of his family in a mist on the mountainside.
Mr Sikes gives a very graphic description of the appearance of this apparition to a peasant farmer near Cardiff, a little over forty years ago. To be precise, it was on the evening of the 14th November, 1877. The farmer was on a visit to an old friend at the time, and was awakened at midnight by the most ghastly screaming and a violent shaking of the window-frame. The noise continued for some seconds, and then terminated in one final screech that far surpassed all the others in intensity and sheer horror. Greatly excited—though Mr Sikes affirms he was not frightened—the old man leaped out of bed, and, throwing open the window, saw a figure like a frightful old woman, with long, dishevelled, red hair, and tusk-like teeth, and a startling white complexion, floating in mid-air. She was enveloped in a long, loose, flowing kind of black robe that entirely concealed her body. As he gazed at her, completely dumbfounded with astonishment, she peered down at him and, throwing back her dreadful head, emitted another of the very wildest and most harrowing of screams.He then heard her flap her wings against a window immediately underneath his, after which he saw her fly over to an inn almost directly opposite him, called the “Cow and Snuffers,” and pass right through the closed doorway.
After waiting some minutes to see if she came out again, he at length got back into bed, and on the morrow learned that Mr Llewellyn, the landlord of the “Cow and Snuffers,” had died in the night about the same time as the apparition, which he, the old farmer, now concluded must have been the Gwrach y Rhibyn, had appeared.
There is, of course, this much in common between the Gwrach y Rhibyn and the Banshee: both are harbingers of death; both signalise their advent by shrieks, and both confine their hauntings to really ancient Celtic families; but here, it seems to me, the likeness ends. The Gwrach y Rhibyn is more grotesque than horrible, and would seem to belong rather to the order of witches in fairy lore than to the denizens of the ghost world.
Another ghostly phenomenon of the death-warning type that is, I believe, to be met with in Wales, is the Canhywllah Cyrth, or corpse candle, so called because the apparition resembles a material candlelight, saving for the fact that it vanishes directly it is approached, and reformsspeedily again afterwards. The following descriptions of the Canhywllah Cyrth are taken from Mr T. C. Charley’s “News from the Invisible World,” pp. 121-4. The first extract is the account of the corpse candles given by the Rev. Mr Davis.
“If it be a little candle,” he writes, “pale or bluish, then follows the corpse either of an abortive, or some infant; if a big one, then the corpse either of someone come of age; if there be seen two or three or more, some big, some small, together, then so many such corpses together. If two candles come from divers places, and be seen to meet, the corpses will do the like; if any of these candles be seen to turn, sometimes a little out of the way that leadeth unto the church, the following corpse will be found to turn into that very place, for the avoiding of some dirty lane, etc. When I was about fifteen years of age, dwelling at Llanglar, late at night, some neighbours saw one of these candles hovering up and down along the bank of the river, until they were weary in beholding; at last they left it so, and went to bed. A few weeks after, a damsel from Montgomeryshire came to see her friends, who dwelt on the other side of the Istwyth, and thought to ford it at the place where the light was seen; but being dissuaded by some lookers-on (by reason of a flood) she walked up and downalong the bank, where the aforesaid candle did, waiting for the falling of the waters, which at last she took, and was drowned therein.”