"Then Cuchulain went on his way, and Cathbad that had followed him went with him. And presently they came to a ford, and there they saw a young girl, thin and white-skinned and having yellow hair, washing and ever washing, and wringing out clothing that was stained crimson red, and she crying and keening all the time. 'Little Hound,' said Cathbad, 'Do you see what it is that young girl is doing? It is your red clothes she is washing, and crying as she washes, because she knows you are going to your death against Maeve's great army.'"—"Cuchulain of Muirthemne."
From Cuchulain's day, or it may be from a yet earlier time, that keening woman of the Sidhe has been heard giving her lamentable warning for those who are about to die. Rachel had not yet been heard mourning for her children when the white-skinned girl whose keening has never ceased in Ireland washed red clothes at the ford. It was she or one of her race who told King Brian he was going to meet his death at Clontarf; though after the defeat ofthe old gods that warning had often been sent by a more radiant messenger, as when Columcille at the dawn of the feast of Pentecost "lifted his eyes and saw a great brightness and an angel of God waiting there above him." And Patrick himself had his warning through his angel, Victor, who met him on the road at midday and bade him go back to the barn where he had lodged the night before, for it was there he had to die. Such a messenger may have been at hand at the death of that Irish born mystic, William Blake, when he "burst out into singing of the things he saw in Heaven, and made the rafters ring." And a few years ago the woman of a thatched house at the foot of Echtge told me "There were great wonders done in the old times; and when my father that worked in the garden there above was dying, there came of a sudden three flashes of light into the room, the brightest light that ever was seen in the world; and there was an old man in the room, one Ruane, and I leaned back on him for I had like to faint. And people coming the road saw the light, and up at Mick Inerney's house they all called out that our house was in flames. And when they came and heard of the three flashes of light coming into the room and about the bed they all said it was the angels that were his friends that had come to meet him." When Raftery died, the blind poet who wandered through our townlands a hundred years ago, some say there were flames about the house all through the night, "and those were the angels waking him." Yet his warning had not been sent through these white messengers but through a vision that hadcome to him once in Galway, when Death himself had appeared "thin, miserable, sad and sorrowful; the shadow of night upon his face, the tracks of the tears down his cheeks" and had told him he had but seven years to live. And though Raftery spoke back to him in scornful verse, there are some who say he spent those last seven years in praying and in making his songs of religion. To some it is a shadow that brings the warning, or a noise of knocking or a dream. At the hour of a violent death nature itself will show sympathy; I have been told on a gloomy day that it had darkened because there was a man being hanged; and a woman who had travelled told me that once at Bundoran she had "seen the waves roaring and turning" and she knew later it was because at that very time two young girls had been drowned.
I was told by Steve Simon:
I will tell you what I saw the night my wife died. I attended the neighbours up to the road, for they had come to see her, but she said there was no fear of her, and she would not let them stop because she knew that they were up at a wake the night before.
So when I left them I was going back to the house, and I saw the shadow of my wife on the road before me, and it was as white as drifted snow. And when I came into the house, there she was dying.
Mrs. Curran:
My cousin Mary that lives in the village beyond told me that she was coming home yesterday week along the road, and she is a girl would not be afraid to walk the whole world with herself. And it was late, and suddenly there was a man walking beside her, inside the field, on the other side of the wall.
And at first she was frightened, but then she felt sure it was her cousin John that was dying, and then she wasn't afraid, for she knew her cousin would do her no harm. And after a while he was gone, and when she got near home and saw thelights she was frightened, and when she got into the house she was in a sort of a faint. And next day, this day week, her cousin was dead.
Old Simon:
I heard the Banshee crying not long ago, and within three days a boy of the Murphy's was killed by his own horse and he bringing his cart to Kinvara. And I heard it again a few nights ago, but I heard of no death since then. What is the Banshee? It is of the nature of the Hyneses. Six families it cries for, the Hyneses and the Fahys and I forget what are the others.
I heard her beside the river at Ballylee one time. I would stand barefooted in the snow listening to the tune she had, so nice and so calm and so mournful.
I would yield to dreams because of some things were dreamed to me in my lifetime and that turned out true. I dreamed one time that I saw my daughter that was in America dead, and stretched and a table laid out with the corpse. She came home after, and at the end of five months she wasted and died. And there I saw her stretched as in the dream, and it was on my own table.
One time I was walking the road and I heard a great crying and keening beside me, a woman that was keening, and she conveyed me three miles of the road. And when I got to the door of the houseI looked down and saw a little woman, very broad and broad faced—about the bigness of the seat of that table—and a cloak about her. I called out to her that was my first wife—the Lord be with her—and she lighted a candle and I came in weak and lay upon the floor, and I was till 12 o'clock that night lying in the bed.
A man I was talking to said it was the Banshee, and it cries for three families, the Fahys and the O'Briens and another I forget which. My grandmother was a Fahy, and I suppose, father or mother, it follows the generations. I heard it another time and my daughter from America coming into the house that night. It was the most mournful thing ever you heard, keening about the house for the same term as before, till 12 o'clock of night. And within five months my daughter from America was dead.
John Cloran:
There was a man near us that was ploughing a field, and he found an iron box, and they say there was in it a very old Irish book with all the knowledge of the world in it. Anyway, there's no question you could ask him he couldn't answer. And what he says of the Banshee is, that it's Rachel mourning still for every innocent of the earth that is going to die, like as she did for our Lord when the king had like to kill Him. But it's only for them that's sprung from her own tribe that she'll raise her voice.
Mrs. Smith:
As for the Banshee, where she stops is in the old castle of Esserkelly on the Roxborough estate. Many a one has seen her there and heard her wailing, wailing, and she with a red petticoat put about her head. There was a family of the name of Fox in Moneen, and never one of that family died but she'd be heard keening them.
The Spinning Woman:
The Banshee is all I ever saw myself. It was when I was a slip of a girl picking potatoes along with the other girls, we heard crying, crying, in the graveyard beyond at Ryanrush, so we ran like foals to see who was being buried, and I was the first, and leaped up on the wall. And there she was and gave me a slap on the jaw, and she just like a countrywoman with a red petticoat. Often they hear her crying if any one is going to die in the village.
A Seaside Woman:
One time there was a man in the village was dying and I stood at the door in the evening, and I heard a crying—the grandest cry ever you heard—and I said "Glynn's after dying and they're crying him." And they all came to the door and heard it. But my mother went out after that and found him gasping still.
Sure enough it was the Banshee we heard that evening.
And out there where the turf-boat is lying with its sail down, outside Aughanish, there the Banshee does always be crying, crying, for some that went down there some time.
At Fiddoon that strip of land between Tyrone and Duras something appears and cries for a month before any one dies. A great many are taken away sudden there; and they say that it's because of that thing.
The Banshee cries every time one of the Sionnacs dies. And when the old Captain died, the crows all left the place within two days, and never came back for a year.
A Connemara Woman:
There was a boy from Kylemore I met in America used to be able to tell fortunes. He used to be telling them when the work would be done, and we would be having afternoon tea. He told me one time I would soon be at a burying, and it would be a baby's burying, and I laughed at that. But sure enough, my sister's baby, that was not born at the time, died about a month after, and I went to its burying.
A Herd:
Crying for those that are going to die you'd hear of often enough. And when my own wife wasdying, the night she went I was sitting by the fire, and I heard a noise like the blow of a flail on the door outside. And I went to see what it was, but there was nothing there. But I was not in any way frightened, and wouldn't be if she came back in a vision, but glad to see her I would be.
A Miller:
There was a man that was out in the field and a flock of stares (starlings) came about his head, and it wasn't long after that he died.
There's many say they saw the Banshee, and that if she heard you singing loud she'd be very apt to bring you away with her.
A Connemara Woman:
One night the clock in my room struck six and it had not struck for years, and two nights after—on Christmas night—it struck six again, and afterwards I heard that my sister in America had died just at that hour. So now I have taken the weights off the clock, that I wouldn't hear it again.
Mrs. Huntley:
It was always said that when a Lord —— died, a fox was seen about the house. When the last Lord —— lay dying, his daughter heard a noise outside the house one night, and opened thehall-door, and then she saw a great number of foxes lying on the steps and barking and running about. And the next morning there was a meet at some distant covert—it had been changed there from hard by where it was to have taken place on account of his illness—and there was not a single fox to be found there or in any other covert. And that day he died.
J. Hanlon:
There was one Costello used to be ringing the bell and pumping water and such things at Roxborough, and one day he was at the fair of Loughrea. And as he started home he sent word to my grandfather "Come to the corner of the old castle and you'll find me dead." So he set out, and when he got to the corner of the castle, there was Costello lying dead before him.
And once going to a neighbour's house to see a little girl, I saw her running along the path before me. But when I got to the house she was in bed sick, and died two days after.
Pat. Linskey:
Well, the time my own wife died I had sent her intoCloonto get some things from the market, and I was alone in the house with the dog. And what do you think but he started up and went out to the hill outside the house, and there he stood a whilehowling, and it was the very next day my wife died.
Another time I had shut the house door at night and fastened it, and in the morning it was standing wide open. And as I knew by the dates afterwards that was the very night my brother died in India.
Sure I told Stephen Green that, when he buried his mother in England, and his father lying in Kilmacduagh. "You should never separate," says I, "in death a couple that were together in life, for sure as fate, the one'll come to look for the other."
And when there's one of them passing in the air you might get a blast of holy wind you wouldn't be the better of for a long time.
Mrs. Curran:
I was in Galway yesterday, and I was told there that the night before those four poor boys were drowned, there were four women heard crying out on the rocks. Those that saw them say that they were young, and they were out of this world. And one of those boys was out at sea all day, the day before he was drowned. And when he came in to Galway in the evening, some boy said to him "I saw you today standing up on the high bridge." And he was afraid and he told his mother and said "Why did they see me on the high bridge and I out at sea?" And the next day he was drowned. And some say there was not much at all to drown them that day.
A Man near Athenry:
There is often crying heard before a death, and in that field beside us the sound of washing clothes with a beetle is sometimes heard before a death.
I heard crying in that field near the forth one night, and not long after the man it belonged to died.
An Aran Man:
I remember one morning, St. Bridget's Eve, my son-in-law came into the house, where he had been up that little road you see above. And the wife asked him did he see any one, and he said "I saw Shamus Meagher driving cattle." And the wife said, "You couldn't see him, for he's out laying spillets since daybreak with two other men." And he said, "But I did see him, and I could have spoke with him." And the next day—St. Bridget's Day—there was confessions in the little chapel below and I was in it, and Shamus Meagher, and it was he that was kneeling next to me at the Communion. But the next morning he and two other men that had set the spillets went on in their canoe to Kilronan for salt, for they had come short of salt and had a good deal of fish taken. And that day the canoe was upset, and the three of them were drowned.
A Piper:
My father and my mother were in the bed one night and they heard a great lowing and a noise ofthe cattle fighting one another, that they thought they were all killed, and they went out and they were quiet then. But they went on to the next house where they heard a lowing, and all the cattle of that house were fighting one another, and so it was at the next. And in the morning a child, one Gannon, was dead—or taken he was.
An Old Man in Aran:
When I was in the State of Maine, I knew a woman from the County Cork, and she had a little girl sick. And one day she went out behind the house and there she saw the fields full ofthose—full of them. And the little girl died.
And when I was in the same State, I was in the house where there was a child sick. And one night I heard a noise outside, as if of hammering. And I went out and I thought it came from another house that was close by that no one lived in, and I went and tried the door but it was shut up.
And I went back and said to the woman, "This is the last night you'll have to watch the child." And at 12 o'clock the next evening it died.
They took my hat from me one time. One morning just at sunrise I was going down to the sea, and a little storm came, and took my hat off and brought it a good way, and then it brought it back and returned it to me again.
An Old Midwife:
I do be dreaming, dreaming. I dreamt one night I was with my daughter and that she was dead and put in the coffin. And I heard after, the time I dreamt about her was the very time she died.
A Woman near Loughrea:
There are houses in Cloon, and Geary's is one of them, where if the people sit up too late the warning comes; it comes as a knocking at the door. Eleven o'clock, that is the hour. It is likely it is some that lived in the house are wanting it for themselves at that time. And there is a house near the Darcys' where as soon as the potatoes are strained from the pot, they must put a plateful ready and leave it for the night, and milk and the fire on the hearth, and there is not a bit left at morning. Some poor souls that come in, looking for warmth and for food.
There is a woman seen often before a death sitting by the river and racking her hair, and she has a beetle with her and she takes it and beetles clothes in the river. And she cries like any good crier; you would be sorry to be listening to her.
Old King:
I heard the Banshee and saw her. I and six others were card playing in the kitchen at the bighouse, that is sunk into the ground, and I saw her up outside of the window. She had a white dress and it was as if held over her face. They all looked up and saw it, and they were all afraid and went back but myself. Then I heard a cry that did not seem to come from her but from a good way off, and then it seemed to come from herself. She made no attempt to twist a mournful cry but all she said was, "Oh-oh, Oh-oh," but it was as mournful as the oldest of the old women could make it, that was best at crying the dead.
Old Mr. Sionnac was at Lisdoonvarna at that time, and he came home a few days after and took to the bed and died. It is always the Banshee has followed the Sionnacs and cried them.
Mrs. King:
There was a boy of the Naughtons died not far from this, a fine young man. And I set out to go to the burying, and Mrs. Burke along with me. But when we came to the gate we could hear crying for the dead, and I said "It's as good for us wait where we are, for they have brought the corp out and are crying him." So we waited a while and no one came, and so we went on to the house, and we had two hours to wait before they brought out the corp for the burying, and there had been no crying at all till he was brought out. We knew then who it was crying, for if the boy was a Naughton, it is in a house of the Kearns he died, and the Banshee always cries for the Kearns.
A Doctor:
There's a boy I'm attending now, and the first time I went to him, the mother came out of the house with me and said "It's no use to do anything for him, I'm going to lose him." And I asked her why did she say that, and she said "Because the first night he took ill I heard the sound of a chair drawing over to the fire in the kitchen, and it empty, and it was the faeries were coming for him." The boy wouldn't have had much wrong with him, but his brother had died of phthisis, and when he got a cold he made sure he would die too, and he took to the bed. And every day his mother would go in and cry for an hour over him, and then he'd cry and then the father would cry, and he'd say "Oh, how can I leave my father and my mother! Who will there be to mind them when I'm gone?" One time he was getting a little better they sent him over on a message to Scahanagh, and there's a man there called Shanny that makes coffins for the people. And the boy saw Shanny looking at him, and he left his message undone and ran home and cried out "Oh, I'm done for now! Shanny was looking at me to see what size coffin I'd take!" And he cried and they all cried and all the village came in to see what was the matter.
The Old Army man:
As to the invisible world, I hear enough about it, but I have seen but little myself. One nightwhen I was at Calcutta I heard that one Connor was dead—a man that I had been friendly with—so I went to the house. There was a good many of us there, and when it came to just before midnight, I heard a great silence fall, and I looked from one to another to see the silence. And then there came a knock at the window, just as the clock was striking twelve. And Connor's wife said, "It was just at this hour last night there came a knock like that and immediately afterwards he died." And the strange thing is, it was a barrack-room and on the second story, so that no one could reach it from the street.
In India, before Delhi, there was an officer's servant lodged in the same house as me, and was thrown out of his cot every night. And as sure as midnight came, the dogs couldn't stop outside but would come shrinking and howling into the house. Yes indeed, I believe the faeries are in all countries, all over the world; but the banshee is only in Ireland, though sometimes in India I would think of her when I'd hear the hyenas laughing. Keening, keening, you can hear her, but only for the old Irish families, but she'll follow them even as far as Dublin.
An old Athenry man who had been as a soldier all through the Indian Mutiny and had come back to end his days here as a farmer said to me in speaking of "The Others" and those who may be among them: "There's some places of their own we should never touch such as the forths; and if ever we cross their pathways we're like to know it soon enough, for some ill turn they'll do us, and then we must draw back out of their way.... And we should above all things leave the house clean at night, with nothing about that would offend them. For we must all die some day, but God knows we're not all fit for heaven just on the minute; and what the intermediate state may be, or what friends we may want there, I don't know. No one has come back to tell us that."
I was told by John Donovan:
Before I came here I was for two years in a house outside Cloon. And no one that lived there ever prospered but all they did went to loss. I sowed seeds and put in the crop each year, and if I'd stopped there I wouldn't have had enough to keep trousers to my back.In the waythe place must be. I had no disturbance in the house, but some nights I could hear the barrel rolling outside the door, back and forwards, with a sort of a warning to me.
I knew another house in Clare where the front door is always shut up and they only use the back door, but when I asked them the reason they said if they opened the front door a sudden blast would come in, that would take the roof off the house. And there's another house in Clare built in a forth, a new one, shut up and the windows closed, for no one can live in it.
Andrew Lee:
"In the way?" Yes that's a thing that often happens. Sure going into Clough, you might see a house that no man ever yet kept a roof on. Surely it's in the way of their coming and going. And Doctor Nolan's father began to build a barn onetime, and whatever was built in the day, in the night it would be pulled down, so at last they gave over. It was only labour and wages wasted.
Mrs. Cloran:
No, I never heard or felt anything since I came here. The old people used to tell many things, they know more than what the youngsters do. My mother saw many a thing, but they did her no harm. No, I remember none of the stories; since my children died and a weight came on my heart all those things went from me. Yes, it's true Father Boyle banished the dog; and there was a cousin of my own used to live in the house at Garryland, and she could get no sleep for what she used to feel at night. But Father Boyle came and whatever he did, "You'll feel them no more," says he, and she never did, though he was buried before her.
That was a bad, bad place we lived in near the sea. The children never felt anything, but often in the night I could hear music playing and no one else in the house could hear it. But the children died one by one, passing away without pain or ache.
All they saw was twice; the two last little girls I had were beside the door at night talking and laughing and they saw a big dark man pass by, but he never spoke. Some old thing out of the walls he must have been. And soon after that they died.
One time when I was there a strange woman came in, and she knew everything and told me everything. "I'd give you money if I had it," said I. "I know well you haven't much of it," says she; "but take my word and go away out of this house to some other place, for you'rein the way." She told me to tell no one she came, and that shows there was something not right about her; and I never saw her any more.
But if I'd listened to her then, and if I knew then what she meant by the house beingin the wayI wouldn't have stopped in it, and my seven fine children would be with me now. Took away they were bythemand without ache or pain. I never had a sign or a vision from them since, but often and often they come across me in my sleep.
Her Husband:
The woman that came to give my wife the warning, I didn't see her, and she knew all that was in the house and all about me and what money I had, and that I would grow very poor. And she said that before I'd die, I'd go to the strand and come back again. And we couldn't know what she meant, and we thought it must mean that I'd go to America. But we knew it at last. For one day I was washing sheep down at Cahirglissane, and there is said to be the deepest water in the world in one part of that lake. And as I was standing by it, a sheep made a run and went between my two legs, and threw me into thewater, and I not able to swim. And I was brought on the top of the water safe and sound to land again; and I knew well who it was helped me, and saved my life. She that had come before to give advice that would save my children, it's she that was my friend over there. To say a Mass in the house? No use at all that would have been, living in the place we did.
But they're mostly good neighbours. There was a woman they used to help, one of them used to come and help her to clean the house, but she never came when the husband was there. And one day she came and said they were going to move now, to near Clifden. And she bid the woman follow them, and whenever she'd come to a briar turned down, with a thorn stuck in the earth, to build a house there.
A Travelling Man:
I was sleeping at a house one time andtheycame in—the fallen angels. They were pulling the clothes off me, ten times they did that, and they were laughing like geese—just the very sound of geese—and their boots were too large for their feet and were clapping, clapping on the floor. I suppose they didn't like me to be in it, or that the house was built in one of their passages.
My father was driven out of the little garden house at Castleboy one time he went to sleep in it. In the way, I suppose it must have been.
And I knew of a herd's house, where five or six herds went one after another and every one of them died, and their dogs and their cow. And the gentleman that owned the place came to ask another one to go in it, and his wife said she wouldn't go, for there was some bad luck about it. But she went after, and she was a very clean woman, not like some of them that do have the house dirty. Well, one day a woman came to the door and asked for a dish of oaten meal, and she took it from the shelf, and gave it to her. "I'll bring it back to you tomorrow," says she, "it'll be easy getting it then when it's market day." "Do not," says the woman of the house, "for if you do I won't take it." "Well," says the stranger, "you'll have luck after this; only one thing I tell you, keep that door at the back shut, and if you want any opening there, let you open the window." Well, so she did, and by minding that rule, and keeping the house so clean, she was never troubled but lived there all her life.
An Island Woman:
There are some houses that never bring luck. There is one over there, out of this village, and two or three died in it, and one night it blazed up and burned down, those that were out in the fishing boats could see it, but it was never known how it happened.
There was a house over in the other village and a woman living in it that had two forths of land.And she had clever children, but the most of them died one after another, boys and girls, and then the husband died. And after that one of the boys that had died came to her and said "You'd best leave this house or you'll be as we are, and we are all now living in the Black Rock at the gable end of the house. And two of the McDaraghs are with us there."
So after that she left the house—you can cut grass now in the place where it was, and it's green all through the summer and the winter—and she went up to the north side and she married a young man up there, for she was counted a rich woman. She had but two daughters left, and one of them was married, and there was a match to be made for the other, but the stepfather wouldn't allow her to give any of the land to her, so she said she'd go to America, and the priest drew up a stamped paper for her, that they'd keep a portion of money for her every year till she'd come back. It wasn't long after that the stepfather was out in one of the fields one day and two men came and knocked him down and gave him a beating. And it was his belief it was the father of the girl and one of the brothers that came to beat him.
And one of the neighbours that went to the house one night saw one of the brothers standing at the window, plump and plain. And a first cousin of theirs—a Donovan—was near the Black Rock one night, and he saw them playing ball there, the whole of them that had gone, and otherswith them. And when they saw him they whistled to make fun of him, and he went away.
The stepfather died after that, and the woman herself died, and was buried a week yesterday. And she had one son by the second husband and he was always silly-like, and the night she died he went into the room where she was, to the other side of the bed, and he called out, and then he came out walking crooked, and his face drawn up on one side; and so he is since, and a neighbour taking care of him. And you'd hardly mind what a poor silly creature like him would say, but what he says is that it was some of the boys that were gone that were in it. And now there's no one to take up the land that so many were after; the girl in America wouldn't for all the world come back to that place.
"One time on Hy, one Brito of Columcille's brotherhood was dying, and Columcille gave him his blessing but would not see him die, and went out into the little court of the house. And he had hardly gone out when the life went from Brito. And Columcille was out in the little court, and one of the monks saw him looking upward, and wonder on him, and he asked what was it he saw. And Columcille said, 'I have seen just at this moment the holy angels fighting in the air against the power of the enemy, and I gave thanks to Christ, the Judge, because the winning angels have carried to heaven the soul of this stranger that is the first to have died among us in this island. And do not tell his secret to any person in my lifetime,' he said."—"Saints and Wonders."
"With that King Arthur entereth into a great forest adventurous, and rideth the day long until he cometh about evensong into the thick of the forest. And he espied a little house beside a little chapel, and it well seemed to him to be a hermitage.... And it seemed to him that there was a strife in the chapel.The ones were weeping so tenderly and sweetly as it were angels, and the others spake so harshly as it were fiends.... The voices ceased as soon as he was within. He marvelleth how it came that this house and hermitage were solitary, and what had become of the hermit that dwelt therein. He drew nigh the altar of the chapel, and beheld in front thereof a coffin all discovered, and he saw the hermit lying therein all clad in his vestments, and his hands crossed upon his breast, and he had life in him yet, but he was nigh his end, being at the point of death.... The King departed and so returned back into the little house, and sate him down on a seat whereon the hermit wont to sit. And he heareth the strife and the noise begin again within the chapel, and the ones he heareth speaking high and the others low, and he knoweth well by the voices that the ones are angels and the others devils. And he heareth that the devils are distraining on the hermit's soul, and that judgment will presently be given in their favour, whereof make they great joy. King Arthur is grieved in his heart when he heareth that the angels' voices are stilled. And while he sitteth thus, stooping his head toward the ground, full of vexation and discontent, he heareth in the chapel the voice of a Lady that spake so sweet and clear that no man in this earthly world, were his grief and heaviness never so sore, but and he had heard the sweet voice of her pleading would again have been in joy.... The devils go their way all discomfit and aggrieved; and the sweet Mother of our Lord God taketh the soul of the hermit.... Andthe angels take it and begin to sing for joy 'Te Deum Laudamus.' And the Holy Lady leadeth them and goeth her way along with them."—"The High History of the Holy Grail." Translated by Sebastian Evans.
Before I had read this old story from "The High History of the Holy Grail" I had heard on our own roads of the fighting at the hour of death, and how the friends of the dying among the dead come and use their strength on his side, and I had been shown here and there a house where such a fight had taken place. In the old days it was a king or saint who saw and heard this unearthly battle; but now it is not those who live in palaces who are aware of it, and it is not around the roof of a fair chapel the hosts of good and evil gather in combat for the parting soul, but around the thatched and broken roof of the poor.
I was told by An Islander:
There are more of the Sheogue in America than what there are here, and more of other sort of spirits. There was a man from there told me that one night in America he had brought his wife's niece that was sick back from the hospital, and had put her in an upper room. And in the evening they heard a scream from her and she called out "The room is full of them, and my father is with them, and my aunt." And he drove them away and used the devil's name and cursed them. And she was left quiet that night, but the next day she said "I'll be destroyed altogether tonight with them." And he said he'd keep them out, and he locked the door of the house. And towards midnight he heard them coming to the door and trying to get in, but he kept it locked and he called to them by way of the keyhole to keep away out of that. And there was talking among them, and the girl that was upstairs said that she could hear the laugh of her father and of her aunt. And they heard the greatest fighting among them that ever was, and after that they went away, and the girl got well. That's what often happens, crying and fighting for one that's sick or going to die.
Mrs. Meagher:
There was an old woman the other day was telling me of a little girl that was put to bake a cake, for her mother was sick in the room. And when she turned away her head for a minute the cake was gone. And that happened the second day and the third, and the mother was vexed when she heard it, thinking some of the neighbours had come and taken it away.
But the next day an old man appeared, and she knew he was the grandfather, and he said "It's by me the cake was taken, for I was watching the house these three nights when I knew there was some one sick in it. And you never heard such a fight as there was for her last night, and they would have brought her away but for me that had my shoulder to the door." And the woman began to recover from that time.
Tom Smith:
There does often be fighting when a person is dying. John Madden's wife that lived in this house before I came to it, the night she died there was a noise heard, that all the village thought that every wall of every garden round about was falling down. But in the morning there was no sign of any of them being fallen.
And Hannay that lived at Cahir, the bonesetter, when I went to him one time told me that one night late he was walking the road near Ardrahan. And they heard a great noise of fighting in thecastle he was passing by, and no one living in it and it open to the sky. And he turned in and was going up the stairs, and a lady in a white dress stopped him and wouldn't let him pass up. But the next day he went to look and he found the floor all covered with blood.
And before John Casey's death, John Leeson asked me one day were we fighting down at our place, for he heard a great noise of fighting the night before.
A Farmer:
As to fighting for those that are dying, I'd believe in that. There was a girl died not far from here, and the night of her death there was heard in the air the sound of an army marching, and the drums beating, and it stopped over the house where she was lying sick. And they could see no one, but could hear the drums and the marching plain enough, and there were like little flames of lightning playing about it.
Did they fight for Johnny Casey? No, believe me it's not among the faeries Johnny Casey is. Too old he is for them to want him among them, and too cranky.
I would hardly believe they'd take the old, but we can't know what they might want of them. And it's well to have a friend among them, andit's always said you have no right to fret if your children die, for it's well to have them there before you. And when a person is dying the friends and the others will often come about the house and will give a great challenge for him. They don't want cross people, and they won't take you if you say so much as one cross word. It's only the good and the pious they want. Now isn't that very good of them?
Another:
There was a young man I knew died, a fine young man, twenty-five years of age. He was seven or eight days ill, and the night he died they could hear fighting around the house, and they heard voices but they couldn't know what they were saying. And in the morning the ground was all covered with blood.
When Connors the young policeman died, sure the mother said she never heard such fighting as went on within the house. And there was blood splashed high up on the walls. They never let on how he got the touch, but I suppose they knew it themselves.
A Gatekeeper:
There was a girl near Westport wasaway, and the way it came on her was, she was on the road one day and two men passed her, and one of them said, "That's a fine girl," and the other said, "Shebelongs to my town," and there and then she got a pain in her knee, and couldn't walk home but had to be brought in a car. And she used to be away at night, and thorns in her feet in the morning, but she never said where she went. But one time the sister brought her to Kilfenora, and when they were crossing a bog near to there, she pointed out a house in the bog, and she said "It's there I was last night." And the sister asked did she know any one she saw in it, and she said "There was one I know, that is my mother's cousin," and she told her name. And she said "But for her they'd have me ill-treated, but she fought for me and saved me." She was thought to be dying one time and given over, and my mother sent me to see her, and how was she. And she was lying on the bed and her eyes turned back, and she speechless, and I told my mother when I came home she hadn't an hour to live. And the next day she was up and about and not a thing on her. It might be the mother's cousin that fought for her again there. She went to America after.
An Aran Woman:
There's often fighting heard about the house where one is sick, that is what we call "the fighting of the friends" for we believe it is the friends and the enemies of the sick person fighting for him.
I knew a house where there were a good many sleeping one night, and in the morning there wasblood on the threshold, and the clothes of those that slept on the floor had blood on them. And it wasn't long after that the woman of the house took sick and died.
One night there was one of the boys very sick within, and in the morning the grandmother said she heard a great noise of fighting in the night about the door. And she said: "If it hadn't been for Michael and John being drowned, you'd have lost Martin last night. For they were there fighting for him; I heard them, and I saw the shadow of Michael, but when I turned to take hold of him he was gone."