He had barely uttered these words, when the whole assembly looked at one another with startled faces.
“Hark!” exclaimed one. “Do you hear that screaming and clapping? What in the world is it?”
“I should say,” said another, “that it was some puir bairn being done to death were it not for the clapping, but that gets over me. Whatever can it mean?”
At that moment steps were heard descending the stairs in a great hurry, and a young man, with bright red hair, and dressed strictly in accordance with the fashion prevailing at that time, burst into the room.
“Boys,” he exclaimed, his voice shaking with emotion, “I have just seen the Banshee. She was in the road outside the gates of this house, running backwards and forwards, just as I saw her five years ago in Kerry, and, as I tried to pass her by to get on my way to Dumfries, she waved me back, shaking her fist and screaming at the same time. Then she signalled to me to come here, and ran on ahead of me, crying, and groaning,and clapping her hands. And as I knew it would be as much as my life is worth to disobey her, I followed. You can still hear her outside, keening and screeching. But what are all these bricks for, and this mortar?”
“The informer, Robert Dunloe,” exclaimed one of the revellers. “We have been bricking him up for a lark, and intend keeping him here till the morning.”
“It’s a lie,” Ronan shouted. “I’m no more Dunloe than any of you. I’m Ronan Malachy, I tell you, and my home is in Dublin. I heard an Irish voice just now, surely he can tell I’m Irish, too.”
“Arrah, I believe you,” said the new-comer. “It’s the real brogue you’ve got, and none other, though it’s not so pronounced as is my own; but may be you’ve lived longer in this country than I. Pull down those bricks, boys, and let me have a look at him.”
“No, no,” cried several voices, angrily. “Anybody could take you in, Pat. He’s Dunloe right enough; and now we’ve got him, we intend to keep him.”
In the altercation that now ensued, some sided with the Irishman, and some against him; but over and above all the clamour and confusion the voice of the Banshee could still be heardshrieking, and wailing, and clapping her hands.
At last someone struck a blow, and in an instant swords were drawn, sticks and cudgels were used, furniture was flung about freely, and table, brazier, and cauldron were overturned; and the blazing pitch and red hot coals, coming in contact with piled up articles of all kinds—casks, chests, boxes, musty old books, paper and logs—it was not long before the whole chamber became a mass of flames.
One or two of the calmer and more sober revellers attempted to get to the recess and batter down the bricks, which were merely placed together without cement, but the fury of the flames drove them back, and the hapless Ronan was, in the end, abandoned to his fate.
Hideously aware of what was going on, he struggled desperately to free himself, and, at last succeeding, made a frantic attempt to reach a small window, placed at a height of some seven or eight feet from the floor. After several fruitless efforts he triumphed, only to discover, however, that the aperture was just too small for his body to pass through.
The flames had, by this time, reached the entrance to the recess, and the heat from them was so stupendous that Ronan, weak and exhaustedafter his long fast and all the harrowing and exciting moments he had passed through, let go his hold, and, falling backwards, struck his head a terrific crash on the floor.
Much to his amazement, on recovering his faculties, Ronan found himself lying out of doors. Above him was no abysmal darkness, only the heavens brilliantly lighted by moon and stars, whilst as far as his sight could travel was free and open space, a countryside dotted here and there with gorse bushes and the silvery shimmering surface of moorland tarns. He turned round, and close beside him was a big boulder of rock that he now remembered slipping from when he had dropped over the wall to take cover from the storm. And there, sure enough, was the shelter. He got up and went towards it. It was quite deserted, no one was there, not even a cow, and the silence that came to him was just the ordinary silence of the night, with nothing in it weirder or more arrestive than the rushing of distant water and the occasional croaking of a toad. Considerably mystified, and unable to decide in his mind whether all he had gone through had been a dream or not, he now clambered back into the road and pursued his way, according to his original intention, towards Lockerbie.
On reaching the spot where he had in his dream, or whatever it was, first sighted the Spelkin Towers, he perceived, to his amazement, the very same building, apparently exact in every detail. On approaching nearer he found the white gate, but whereas when he had beheld the Towers only such a short time ago, there had been a feeble flicker of artificial light in some of the slit-like windows, all was now gloomy and deserted, and, still further to his amazement, he perceived, on opening the gate and entering, that the building was, to some extent, in ruins, and that the charred timber and blackened walls gave every indication of its having been partially destroyed by fire.
Totally unable to account for his experience, but convinced in his own mind that it was not all a dream, he now hurried on, and reached his aunt’s house in Lockerbie, just in time to wash and tidy himself for breakfast.
After the meal, and when he was sitting with his aunt by the fire in the drawing-room, Ronan not only announced to her the purpose of his visit, but gave her a detailed account of his journey and adventures on the way, asking her in conclusion what she thought of his experience, whether she believed it to be merely a dream or, in very truth, an encounter with the denizens of ghostland.
Miss Bridget Malachy, who during Ronan’srecitation obviously had found it extremely difficult to maintain silence, now gave vent to her feelings.
“I cannot tell you,” she said excitedly, “how immensely interested I am in all you have told me. Last night was the anniversary of your father’s strange disappearance. I had only been living here a few weeks, when I received a letter from him, saying he had business to transact in the North of England, and would like to spend two or three days with me. He gave me the exact route he intended to travel by from Dublin, and the exact hour he expected to arrive. Your father was the most precise man I ever met.
“Well, on the night before the day he was due to arrive, as I was sitting in this very room, writing, I suddenly heard a tapping at the window, as if produced by the beak and claws of some bird, or very long finger nails. Wondering what it could be, I got up, and, pulling aside the blind, received the most violent shock. There, looking directly in at me, with an expression of the most intense sorrow and pity in its eyes, was the face of a woman. The cheeks shone with a strange, startling whiteness, and the long, straggling hair fell in a disordered mass low over her neck and shoulders. As her gaze met mine she tapped the window with her long, white fingers and, throwingback her head, uttered the most harrowing, heart-rending scream. Convinced now that she was the Banshee, which I had often had described to me by my friends, I was not so much frightened as interested, and I was about to address her and ask her what in God’s name she wanted, when she abruptly vanished, and I found myself staring into space.
“A week later, I received tidings that a body, believed to be your father’s, had just been recovered from the Solway Firth, and I was asked to go at once and identify it. I went, and though it had remained in the water too long, perhaps, to be easily recognisable, I was absolutely certain my surmises were correct, and that the body was that of a stranger. It was that of a man somewhat taller than your father, and the tips of his fingers, moreover, were spatulate, whereas, like all the rest of our family’s, your father’s fingers were pointed. From what you have told me I am now convinced that I really was right, and that your father, falling into the hands of the smugglers, who, at that time, infested the whole of this neighbourhood, did actually meet with foul play. I recollect perfectly well the fire at the Spelkin Towers the night your father disappeared, but, until now, I never in any way associated the event with him. Do, I beseech you, make athorough search of the ruins and see if you can find anything that will help to substantiate your story and prove that your experience was of a nature very different from that of an ordinary dream.”
Ronan needed no further bidding. Accompanied by his aunt’s gardener and two or three villagers—for the gardener would not venture there without a formidable escort; the place, he said, bore a most evil and sinister reputation—he at once proceeded to the Towers, and, in one of the cellars, bricked up in a recess, they found a skeleton—the skeleton of a man, on one of whose fingers was a signet-ring, which Miss Bridget Malachy at once identified as having belonged to her missing brother. Moreover, with the remains were a few tattered shreds—all that was left of the clothes—and, though blackened and rusty, a number of tiny bells, such as might have once adorned the cap of a Court jester.
The Spelkin Towers is still haunted, for it has ghosts of its own, but never, I believe, since that memorable experience of Ronan’s within its grey and lichen-covered walls, has it again been visited by the Banshee.
In order definitely to establish my claim to the Banshee, I am obliged to state here that the family to which I belong is the oldest branch of the O’Donnells, and dates back in direct unbroken line to Niall of the Nine Hostages. I am therefore genuinely Celtic Irish, but, in addition to that, I have in my veins strains both of the blood of the O’Briens of Thomond (whose Banshee visited Lady Fanshawe), and of the O’Rourkes, Princes of Brefni; for my ancestor, Edmund O’Donnell, married Bridget, daughter of O’Rourk of the house of Brefni, and his mother was the daughter of Donat O’Brien of the house of Thomond. All of which, and more, may be ascertained by a reference to the Records of the Truagh O’Donnells.[15]
Possibly my first experience of the Banshee occurred before I was old enough to take note of it. I lost my father when I was a baby. He left home with the intention of going on a brief visit to Palestine, but, meeting on the way an ex-officer of the Anglo-Indian army, who had been engaged by the King of Abyssinia to help in the work of remodelling the Abyssinian army, he abandoned his idea of visiting the Holy Land, and decided to go to Abyssinia instead.
What actually happened then will probably never be known. His death was reported to have taken place at Arkiko, a small village some two hours walking distance from Massowah, and from the letters[16]subsequently received from the French Consul at Massowah and several other people, as well as from the entries in his diary (the latter being recovered with other of his personal effects and sent home with them), there seems to have been little, if any, doubt that he was trapped and murdered, the object being robbery.
The case created quite a sensation at the time, and is referred to in a work entitled “The Oriental Zig-zag,” by Charles Hamilton, who, I believe, stayed some few years later at the house atMassowah, where my father lodged, and was stated to have shared his fate.
With regard to the supernatural happenings in connection with the event. The house that my father had occupied before setting out for the East was semi-detached, the first house in a row, which at that time was not completed. It was situated in a distinctly lonely spot. On the one side of it, and to the rear, were gardens, bounded by fields, and people rarely visited the place after nightfall.
On the night preceding my father’s death, my mother was sitting in the dining-room, which overlooked the back garden, reading. It was a windy but fine night, and, save for the rustling of the leaves, and an occasional creaking of the shutters, absolutely still. Suddenly, from apparently just under the window, there rang out a series of the most harrowing screams. Immeasurably startled, and fearing, at first, that it was some woman being murdered in the garden, my mother summoned the servants, and they all listened. The sounds went on, every moment increasing in vehemence, and there was an intensity and eeriness about them that speedily convinced the hearers that they could be due to no earthly agency. After lasting several minutes they finally died away in a long, protracted wail, full of such agony anddespair, that my mother and her companions were distressed beyond words.
As soon as they could summon up the courage they went out and scoured the gardens, but though they looked everywhere, and there was little cover for anyone to hide, they could discover nothing that could in any way account for the noises. A dreadful fear then seized my mother. She believed that she had heard the Banshee which my father had often spoken about to her, and she was little surprised, when, in a few days time, the news reached her that my father was dead. He had died about dawn, the day after my mother and the servants had heard the screaming. I sent an account of the incident, together with other phenomena that happened about the same time, signed by two of the people who experienced them, to the Society for Psychical Research, who published it in their journal in the autumn of 1899.
I have vivid recollections of my mother telling me about it when I was a little boy, and I remember that every time I heard the shutters in the room where we sat rattle, and the wind moan and sigh in the chimney, I fully expected to hear terrible shrieks ring out, and to see some white and ghastly face pressed against the window-panes, peering in at me. After these recitationsI was terrified at the darkness, and endured, when alone in my bedroom, agonies of mind that no grown-up person, perhaps, could ever realise. The house and garden, so very bright and cheerful, and in every way ordinary, in the daytime, when the sun was out, seemed to be entirely metamorphosed directly it was dusk. Shadows assuredly stranger than any other shadows—for as far as I could see they had no material counterpart—used to congregate on the stairs, and darken the paths and lawn.
There were always certain spots that frightened me more than others, a bend in one of the staircases, for example, the banisters on the top landing, a passage in the basement of the house, and the path leading from the gate to the front door. Even in the daytime, occasionally, I was chary about passing these places. I felt by instinct something uncanny was there; something that was grotesque and sinister, and which had specially malevolent designs toward me. When I was alone I hurried past, often with my eyes shut; and at night time, I am not ashamed to admit, I often ran. Yet, at that time I had no knowledge that others beside myself thought these things and had these experiences. I did not know, for instance, that once, when my youngest sister, who was a little older than I, waspassing along that passage I so much dreaded, she heard, close beside her, a short, sharp laugh, or chuckle, and so expressive of hatred and derision, that the sound of it haunted her memory ever after. I also did not know then that one evening, immediately prior to my father’s death, when another of my sisters was running up the stairs, she saw, peering down at her from over the banisters on that top landing I so much dreaded, a face which literally froze her with horror. Crowned with a mass of disordered tow-coloured hair, the skin tightly drawn over the bones like a mummy, it looked as if it had been buried for several months and then resurrected. The light, obliquely set eyes, suffused with baleful glee, stared straight at her, while the mouth, just such a mouth as might have made that chuckle, leered. It did not seem to her to be the face of anyone that had ever lived, but to belong to an entirely different species, and to be the creation of something wholly evil. She looked at it for some seconds, too petrified to move or cry out, until, her faculties gradually reassuring themselves, she turned round from the spot and flew downstairs.
Some years later, just before the death of my mother, at about the same time of day and in precisely the same place, the head was again seen,this time by my younger sister, the one who had heard the ghostly chuckle.
I think, without doubt, that the chuckle, no less than the head, must be attributed to the malignant Banshee. I may add, perhaps, without digressing too much, that supernatural happenings, apart from the Banshee, were associated with both my parents’ deaths. On the night following my father’s murder, and on every subsequent night for a period of six weeks, my mother and the servants were aroused regularly at twelve o’clock by a sound, as of someone hammering down the lids of packing-cases, issuing from the room in the basement of the house, which my father had always used as a study. They then heard footsteps ascending the stairs and pausing outside each bedroom in turn, which they all recognised as my father’s, and, occasionally, my old nurse used to see the door of the night nursery open, and a light, like the light of a candle outside, whilst at the same time she would hear, proceeding from the landing, a quick jabber, jabber, jabber, as of someone talking very fast, and trying very hard to say something intelligible. No one was ever seen when this voice and the footsteps, said to be my father’s, were heard, but this circumstance may be accounted for by the fact that my father, just before leaving Ireland, had remarked to mymother that, should anything happen to him abroad, he would in his spirit appear to her; and she, growing pale at the mere thought, begged him to do no such thing, whereupon he had laughingly replied:
“Very well then, I will find some other means of communicating with you.”
Many manifestations of a similar nature to the foregoing, and also, like the foregoing, having nothing to do with the Banshee, occurred immediately after the death of my mother, but of these I must give an account on some future occasion.
Years passed, and nothing more was seen or heard of the Banshee till I was grown up. After leaving school I went to Dublin to read with Dr Chetwode Crawley, in Ely Place, for the Royal Irish Constabulary, and I might, I think, have passed into that Force, had it not been for the fact that at the preliminary medical examination some never-to-be-forgotten and, as I thought then, intensely ill-natured doctor, rejected me. Accordingly, I never entered for the literary, but returned home thoroughly dispirited, and faced with the urgent necessity of at once looking around for something to do. However, in a very short time I had practically settled on going to America to a ranch out West (a most disastrousventure as it subsequently proved to be), and it was immediately after I had reached this decision that my first actual experience with what I believe to have been the malevolent family Banshee occurred. It happened in the same house in which the other supernatural occurrences had taken place. All the family, saving myself, were away at the time, and I was the sole occupant of one of the landings, the servants being all together on another floor.
I had gone to bed early, and had been sleeping for some time, when I was awakened about two o’clock by a loud noise, for which I could not account, and which reverberated in my ears for fully half a minute. I was sitting up, still wondering what on earth could have produced it, when, immediately over my head, I heard a laugh, an abrupt kind of chuckle, that was so malicious and evil that I could not possibly attribute it to any human agency, but rather to some entity of wholly satanic origin, and which my instinct told me was one of our attendant Banshees. I got out of bed, struck a light, and made a thorough investigation, not only of the room, but the landing outside. There was no one there, nothing, as far as I could see, that could in any way explain the occurrence. I threw open the bedroom window and looked out. The night was beautiful—thesky brilliantly illuminated with moon and stars—and everything perfectly still, excepting for the very faintest rustling of the leaves as the soft night breeze swept through the branches and set them in motion. I listened for some time, but, the hush continuing, I at last got back again into bed, and eventually fell asleep. I mentioned the incident in the morning to the servants, and they, too, had heard it.
A short time afterwards I went to the United States, and had the most unhappy and calamitous experience in my whole career.
My next experience of the Banshee happened two or three years later, when, having returned from America, I was living in Cornwall, running a small preparatory school, principally for delicate boys.
The house I occupied was quite new, in fact I was the first tenant, and had watched it being built. It was the last house in a terrace, and facing it was a cliff, at the foot of which ran a steep path leading to the beach. At this particular time there was no one in the house but my aged housekeeper, by name Mrs Bolitho, and myself, and whilst Mrs Bolitho slept in a room on the first floor, I was the sole occupant of the floor immediately above it.
One night I had been sitting up writing, ratherlater than usual, and, being very tired, had dropped off to sleep, almost immediately after getting into bed. I woke about two o’clock hearing a curious kind of tapping noise coming along the passage that ran parallel with my bed. Wondering what it could be, I sat up and listened. There were only bare boards outside, and the noise was very clear and resonant, but difficult to analyse. It might have been produced by the very high heels of a lady’s boot or shoe, or the bony foot of a skeleton. I could compare it with nothing else. On it came, tap, tap, tap, till it finally seemed to halt outside my door. There was then a pause, during which I could feel somebody or something was listening most earnestly, making sure, I thought, whether I was awake or not, and then a terrific crash on one of the top panels of the door. After this there was silence. I got up, and, somewhat timidly opening the door, for I more than half expected to find myself confronted with something peculiarly dreadful and uncanny, peeped cautiously out. There was nothing to be seen, however; nothing but the cold splendour of the moon, which, shining through a window nearly opposite me, filled the entire passage with its beams. I went into each of the rooms on the landing in turn, but they were all empty, and there was nothing anywhere thatcould in any way account for what I had heard. In the morning I questioned Mrs Bolitho, but she had heard nothing.
“For a wonder,” she said, “I slept very soundly all through the night, and only awoke when it was time to get up.”
Two days later I received tidings of the death of my uncle, Colonel John Vize O’Donnell of Trough.[17]He had died almost suddenly, his death occurring a few hours after I had heard the footsteps and the knock.
Three years after this experience I had moved into another house in the same town—also a new house, and also the last in a terrace. At the rear, and on one side of it, was a garden, flanked by a hedge, beyond which were fields that led in almost unbroken succession to the coast. It could not be altogether described as occupying a lonely position, although the fields were little frequented after dusk.
Well, one night my wife and I were awakened about midnight by a series of the most agonising andheart-rendingscreams, which, if like anything earthly at all, seemed to us to be more like the screams of a woman in the very direst distress. The cries were so terrible and sounded so near to us, almost, in fact, in the room, that we were bothhorribly alarmed, and hardly knew what to say or think.
“Whatever is happening?” my wife whispered, catching hold of me by the arm, “and what is it?”
“I don’t know,” was my reply, “unless it is the Banshee, for there is nobody else that could make such a noise.”
The screams continued for some seconds, and then died away in one long-drawn-out wail or sob. I waited for some minutes to see if there was a repetition of the sounds, and, there being none, I at length got up, and not, I confess, without considerable apprehensions, went out on to the landing, where I found several of the other inmates of the house collected together discussing with scared faces the screams which they, too, had heard. An examination of the house and grounds was at once made, but nothing was discerned that could in any way account for the sounds, and I adhered to my opinion that it must have been the Banshee; which opinion was very considerably strengthened, when, a few days later, I received the news that an aunt of mine, an O’Donnell, in County Kerry, had passed away within twenty-four hours of the time the screaming had occurred. It is, perhaps, a dozen years or so since we left Cornwall, and my latest experience of theBanshee took place in the house in which we are now living near the Crystal Palace.
The experience occurred in connection with the death of my youngest sister. On the night preceding her decease I dreamed most vividly that I saw the figure of a female dressed in some loose-flowing, fantastic garment come up the path leading to the house, and knock very loudly several times, in quick succession, at the back door. I was going to answer, when a sudden terror held me back.
“It’s the Banshee,” a voice whispered in my ear, “the Banshee. Don’t let her in, she’s coming for one of you.”
This so startled me that I awoke. I then found that my wife was awake also, trembling all over, and in a great state of excitement.
“Did you hear that tremendous knock?” she whispered.
“What!” I replied. “You don’t mean to say there really was a knock? Why, I fancied it was only in my dream.”
“You may have dreamt it,” she said, “but I didn’t—I heard it; it was at this door, not at the front door. I say knock, but it was really a crash—a terrific crash on the top panel of the door.”
We anxiously waited to see if there would bea repetition, but, nothing happening, we lay down again, and eventually went to sleep.
On the following day we received a telegram informing us that at ten o’clock that morning my sister had passed away.
Since then, I am glad to relate I have not again come in contact with the Banshee. At the same time, however, there are occasions when I feel very acutely that she is not far away, and I am seldom, if ever, perhaps, absolutely free from an impression that she hovers near at hand, ready to manifest herself the moment either death or disaster threaten any member of my family. Moreover, that she takes a peculiar interest in my personal affairs, I have, alas, only too little reason to doubt.
In reply to a letter of mine asking for particulars of the Banshee alleged to be attached to the Inchiquin family, I received the following:
“I think the name (of the Banshee) wasObenheim, but I am not sure. Two or three people have told me that she appeared before my grandfather’s death, but none of them either saw or heard her, but they had met people who did say they had heard her.”
Writing also for particulars of the Banshee to a cousin of the head of one of the oldest Irish clans, I received a long letter, from which I will quote the following:
“I have heard ‘the Banshee’ cry. It is simply like a woman wailing in the most unearthly fashion. At the time an O’Neill was in this house, and she subsequently heard that her eldest brother had died on that night between twelve a.m. and three a.m., when we all of us heard the Banshee wailing. I heard her also at my mother’sdeath, and at the death of my husband’s eldest sister. The cry is not always quite the same. When my dear mother died, it was a very low wail which seemed to go round and round the house.“At the death of one of the great O’Neill family, we located the cry at one end of the house. When my sister-in-law died I was wakened up by a loud scream in my room in the middle of the night. She had died at that instant. I heard the Banshee one day, driving in the country, at a distance. Sometimes the Banshee, who follows old families, is heard by the whole village. Some people say she is red-haired and wears a long flowing white dress. She is supposed to wring her long thick hair. Others say she appears as a small woman dressed in black.“Such an apparition did appear to me in the daytime before my mother-in-law died.”
“I have heard ‘the Banshee’ cry. It is simply like a woman wailing in the most unearthly fashion. At the time an O’Neill was in this house, and she subsequently heard that her eldest brother had died on that night between twelve a.m. and three a.m., when we all of us heard the Banshee wailing. I heard her also at my mother’sdeath, and at the death of my husband’s eldest sister. The cry is not always quite the same. When my dear mother died, it was a very low wail which seemed to go round and round the house.
“At the death of one of the great O’Neill family, we located the cry at one end of the house. When my sister-in-law died I was wakened up by a loud scream in my room in the middle of the night. She had died at that instant. I heard the Banshee one day, driving in the country, at a distance. Sometimes the Banshee, who follows old families, is heard by the whole village. Some people say she is red-haired and wears a long flowing white dress. She is supposed to wring her long thick hair. Others say she appears as a small woman dressed in black.
“Such an apparition did appear to me in the daytime before my mother-in-law died.”
The writer of this letter has asked me not to publish her name, but I have it by me in case corroboration is needed.
In reference to the O’Donnell Banshee, Chapter XIII., my sister, Petronella O’Donnell, writes:
“I remember vividly my first experience of our Banshee. I had never heard of it at the time, and in fact I have only heard of it in recent years.“It happened one day that I went into the hall, in the daytime, I forget the exact hour, and as Iclimbed the stairway, being yet a small child, I happened to look up. There, looking over the rails at the top of the stairway, was an object so horrible that I shudder when I think of it even now. In a greenish halo of light the most terrible head imagination could paint—only this was no imagination, I knew it was a real object—was looking at me with apparently fiendish fire in its light and leering eyes. The head was neither man nor woman’s; it was ages old; it might have been buried and dug up again, it was so skull-like and shrunken; its pallor was horrible, grey and mildewy; its hair was long. Its mouth leered, and its light and cruel eyes seemed determined to hurt me to the utmost, with the terror it inspired. I remember how my childish heart rebelled against its cowardice in trying to hurt and frighten so small a child. Gazing back at it in petrified horror, I slowly returned to the room I had come from. I resolved never to tell anyone about it, I was so proud and reserved by nature.“I had then two secret terrors hidden in my Irish heart. The first one I have never till recently spoken of to anyone; it happened before I saw this awful head. I was asleep, but yet I knew I wasnotasleep. Suddenly, down the road that led to our home in Ireland came an object so terrible that for years after my child’s heart used to stand still at the memory of it. The object I saw coming down to our house was a procession—there were several pairs of horses being led by grooms in livery, pulling an old coach with them.It was a large and awful looking old coach! The horses were headless, and the men who led them were headless, and even now as I write, the awful terror of it all comes over me, it was a terror beyond words. Iknew, I felt certain they had come to cut off my head! This procession of headless things stopped at our door, the men entered the house, chased me up to the very top of it, and then cut off my head! I can remember saying to myself, ‘Now I am dead, I am dead, I can suffer no more.’“They then went back to the coach, and the procession moved away and was lost to view.“Night after night I lay shivering with terror, for months, for years, there was such aluridhorror about this headless procession.“Some weeks after I saw the head, we heard that our father had been killed about that time in Egypt, murdered it was supposed. My mother died some years afterwards.“One evening, when I was grown up, we were sitting round the fire with friends, and someone said:“‘I don’t believe in ghosts. Have you ever met anyone who has seen one? I have not!’“A sudden impulse came over me—never to that moment had I ever mentioned the head—and, leaning forward, I said:“‘I have seen a ghost; I saw the most terrible head when I was a child, looking over the staircase.’“To my astonishment my sister, who was sitting near me, said:“‘I saw a most terrible head, too, looking over the staircase.’“I said:“‘When did you see it? I saw it when our father died.’“And she said:“‘And,Isaw it when our mother died.’“In describing it, we found all the details agreed, and learned not long after that it was without doubt our own Banshee we had seen.“People have said to me that Banshees are heard, not seen. This is not correct, it all depends if one is clairvoyant or clairaudient.“I remember when my mother was alive, how I came in from a walk one evening and found the whole house in a ferment, the most terrible screaming and crying had been heard pass over the house. Our mother said it must be the Banshee. Sure enough we heard of the death of a very near relation directly after. If I had been present, no doubt I should not only have heard the screams but I should have seen something as well.“A few years ago in Ireland I was talking about these things, and a relation I had not met before was present. He said to me:“‘But as well as the Banshee do you know that we have aheadless coachattached to our family; it is proceeded by men, who lead the horses, and none of them have heads.’“Like a flash came that never-to-be-forgotten vision of that awful procession I had seen as a child, and of which I had never made any mention till then. I remember now that after I saw the headless coach we heard that our grandmother was dead. I believe that the headless coach belongs to her family.“Petronella O’Donnell.”
“I remember vividly my first experience of our Banshee. I had never heard of it at the time, and in fact I have only heard of it in recent years.
“It happened one day that I went into the hall, in the daytime, I forget the exact hour, and as Iclimbed the stairway, being yet a small child, I happened to look up. There, looking over the rails at the top of the stairway, was an object so horrible that I shudder when I think of it even now. In a greenish halo of light the most terrible head imagination could paint—only this was no imagination, I knew it was a real object—was looking at me with apparently fiendish fire in its light and leering eyes. The head was neither man nor woman’s; it was ages old; it might have been buried and dug up again, it was so skull-like and shrunken; its pallor was horrible, grey and mildewy; its hair was long. Its mouth leered, and its light and cruel eyes seemed determined to hurt me to the utmost, with the terror it inspired. I remember how my childish heart rebelled against its cowardice in trying to hurt and frighten so small a child. Gazing back at it in petrified horror, I slowly returned to the room I had come from. I resolved never to tell anyone about it, I was so proud and reserved by nature.
“I had then two secret terrors hidden in my Irish heart. The first one I have never till recently spoken of to anyone; it happened before I saw this awful head. I was asleep, but yet I knew I wasnotasleep. Suddenly, down the road that led to our home in Ireland came an object so terrible that for years after my child’s heart used to stand still at the memory of it. The object I saw coming down to our house was a procession—there were several pairs of horses being led by grooms in livery, pulling an old coach with them.It was a large and awful looking old coach! The horses were headless, and the men who led them were headless, and even now as I write, the awful terror of it all comes over me, it was a terror beyond words. Iknew, I felt certain they had come to cut off my head! This procession of headless things stopped at our door, the men entered the house, chased me up to the very top of it, and then cut off my head! I can remember saying to myself, ‘Now I am dead, I am dead, I can suffer no more.’
“They then went back to the coach, and the procession moved away and was lost to view.
“Night after night I lay shivering with terror, for months, for years, there was such aluridhorror about this headless procession.
“Some weeks after I saw the head, we heard that our father had been killed about that time in Egypt, murdered it was supposed. My mother died some years afterwards.
“One evening, when I was grown up, we were sitting round the fire with friends, and someone said:
“‘I don’t believe in ghosts. Have you ever met anyone who has seen one? I have not!’
“A sudden impulse came over me—never to that moment had I ever mentioned the head—and, leaning forward, I said:
“‘I have seen a ghost; I saw the most terrible head when I was a child, looking over the staircase.’
“To my astonishment my sister, who was sitting near me, said:
“‘I saw a most terrible head, too, looking over the staircase.’
“I said:
“‘When did you see it? I saw it when our father died.’
“And she said:
“‘And,Isaw it when our mother died.’
“In describing it, we found all the details agreed, and learned not long after that it was without doubt our own Banshee we had seen.
“People have said to me that Banshees are heard, not seen. This is not correct, it all depends if one is clairvoyant or clairaudient.
“I remember when my mother was alive, how I came in from a walk one evening and found the whole house in a ferment, the most terrible screaming and crying had been heard pass over the house. Our mother said it must be the Banshee. Sure enough we heard of the death of a very near relation directly after. If I had been present, no doubt I should not only have heard the screams but I should have seen something as well.
“A few years ago in Ireland I was talking about these things, and a relation I had not met before was present. He said to me:
“‘But as well as the Banshee do you know that we have aheadless coachattached to our family; it is proceeded by men, who lead the horses, and none of them have heads.’
“Like a flash came that never-to-be-forgotten vision of that awful procession I had seen as a child, and of which I had never made any mention till then. I remember now that after I saw the headless coach we heard that our grandmother was dead. I believe that the headless coach belongs to her family.
“Petronella O’Donnell.”
The headless coach referred to in the foregoing account comes to us, I believe, from the Vize family. My grandmother before her marriage was Sarah Vize, daughter of John Vize of Donegal, Glenagad and Limerick. Her sister Frances married her cousin, David Roche of Carass (see Burke’s “Landed Gentry of Ireland,” under Maunsell family, and Burke’s “Peerage under Roche”), their son being Sir David Roche, Bart.
The great-great-grandmother of Sarah Vize was Mary, daughter of Butler of the house of the Earl Glengall Cahir. Sarah Vize’s mother, my great-grandmother, before her marriage was Sarah Maunsell, granddaughter of William Maunsell of Ballinamona, County Cork, the fifth son of Colonel Thomas Maunsell of Mocollop.
In the accompanying genealogical tree, tracing the descent of the O’Donnells of Trough from Niall of the Nine Hostages, the O’Briens of Thomond and the O’Rourkes of Brefui, may befound the basis upon which my family’s claim to the dual Banshee rests.
The original may be seen in the office of the King of Arms, Dublin. The following is merely an extract:
Niall of the Nine Hostages.King of Ireland|Conall Gulban|Feargus|Leadna, Prince of Tirconnell|Feargus|Lughaidb, and from
him, in direct descent, to Foirdhealbhach an Fhiona O’Donnhnaill, who had two sons, the elder, Shane Luirg and the younger, Niall Garbh. From Niall Garbh the illustrious Red Hugh and his brother Rory, Earl of Tirconnell, were descended, from Shane Luirg, whose rank as “The O’Donnell” was taken by his younger brother, presumably the stronger man of the two, the Trough O’Donnells are descended.
The line goes on thus:
Shane Luirg|Art O’Donnhnail (ob. circa 1490)|Niall O’Donnhnaill (ob. circa 1525)|Foirdheal bhach O’Donnhnaillm.Julia Maguire (ob. 1552)|Shanem.Rosa, d. of Hugh O’Donnell (ob. 1581)|Hugh O’Donnell of Limerickm.Maria, d. of Donat O’Brien of the House of Thomond (ob. 1610)|Edmund, of Limerickm.Bridget, d. of O’Rourk of the House of Brefui (ob. 1651)|James, of Limerickm.Helena, d. of James Sarsfield, great-uncle of Patrick Sarsfeld, Earl of Lucan (ob. 1680)|Johnm.Margaret, d. of Thomas Creagh of Limerick|Jamesm.Christiana, d. of William Stritch of Limerick|Johnm.Deborah, d. of William Anderson of Tipperary (ob. 1780)|
For particulars of the pedigree see Vol. X., p. 327, Genealogias, in the Office of Ulster King of Arms, Dublin.
From Niall to Shane Luirg, see Register XV., p. 5; from Shane to my grandfather, Elliot, see Register XXIII., p. 286; and down to myself, see “Sheridan,” p. 323.
Referring to the Banshee prior to my aunt’s death (see Chapter XIII.) my wife writes:
“I certainly remember, one night, when we were living in Cornwall, hearing a most awful scream, a scream that rose and fell, and ended in a long-drawn-out wail of agony. I have never heard any other sound at all like it, and therefore cannot think that it could have been anything earthly. At the time, however, I did think that possibly the scream was that of a woman being murdered, and did not rest until my husband, with other inmates of our house, had made a thorough search of the garden and premises.“Shortly after we had had this experience, we heard of the death, in Ireland, of one of my husband’s aunts.“I also recollect that one night, shortly before we received the news of my sister-in-law’s death, I heard a crash on our bedroom door. It was so loud that it quite shook the room, and my husband, apparently wakened by it, told me he had dreamed that the Banshee had come and was knocking for admittance. This happened not very long ago, when we were living in Norwood.“Ada O’Donnell.”
“I certainly remember, one night, when we were living in Cornwall, hearing a most awful scream, a scream that rose and fell, and ended in a long-drawn-out wail of agony. I have never heard any other sound at all like it, and therefore cannot think that it could have been anything earthly. At the time, however, I did think that possibly the scream was that of a woman being murdered, and did not rest until my husband, with other inmates of our house, had made a thorough search of the garden and premises.
“Shortly after we had had this experience, we heard of the death, in Ireland, of one of my husband’s aunts.
“I also recollect that one night, shortly before we received the news of my sister-in-law’s death, I heard a crash on our bedroom door. It was so loud that it quite shook the room, and my husband, apparently wakened by it, told me he had dreamed that the Banshee had come and was knocking for admittance. This happened not very long ago, when we were living in Norwood.
“Ada O’Donnell.”
PRINTED ATTHE NORTHUMBERLAND PRESS,WATERLOO HOUSE, THORNTON STREET,NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE
Footnotes:
[1]“Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms and Superstitions of Ireland,” by Lady Wilde.
[2]“The Astral Plane,” p. 106.
[3]This book was published in 1888.
[4]In the Addenda at end of this volume will be found a genealogical tree showing descent of author from the Thomond O’Briens.
[5]In Addenda see tree showing descent of author from O’Rourks of Brefni.
[6]As a rule the Banshee is neither heard nor seen by the person whose death it predicts. There are, however, some notable exceptions.
[7]For further reference to the Banshee of the O’Neills see Addenda.
[8]See Addenda.
[9]See Addenda.
[10]It may be recorded here as a matter of interest that my ancestress, Helena Sarsfield, was a daughter of James Sarsfield, great-uncle of Patrick Sarsfield, Earl of Lucan and the defender of Limerick against the English.
[11]Neither of her stories have appeared in print before.
[12]See “The Ghost World,” by T. F. T. Dyer, p. 227.
[13]See Sir Walter Scott’s Poetical Works, 1853, VIII., p. 126.
[14]These extracts are taken from quotations of the poem in Chapter II. of a work entitled “Ancient History of the Kingdom of Kerry” by Friar O’Sullivan of Muckross Abbey, published in the Journal of the Cork Historical and Archæological Society (Vol. V., No. 44); and Friar O’Sullivan, in commenting upon these passages relating to the Banshees, writes (quoting from “Kerry Records”): “It seems that at this time it was the universal opinion that every district belonging to the Geraldines had its own attendant Banshee” (seeArchæological Journal, 1852, on “Folk Lore” by N. Kearney).
[15]See Records of the Truagh O’Donnells in the Office of the King of Arms, Dublin. Refs.: Genealogias, Vol. XI., p. 327; Register XV., p. 5; Register XXII., p. 286; and Sheridan, p. 323.
[16]The originals are still in existence. The diary was kept right up to the night preceding his death.
[17]Also spelt Truagh.
[18]John O’Donnell of Baltimore’s eldest son, Columbus, had a daughter, Eleanora, who married Adrian Iselin of New York, and their grand-daughter, Norah, is the present Princess Coleredo Mansfeldt.