CHAP. PAGE
[I.]THE DEFINITION AND ORIGIN OF BANSHEES[9]
[II.]SOME HISTORICAL BANSHEES[20]
[III.]THE MALEVOLENT BANSHEE[35]
[IV.]THE BANSHEE ABROAD[51]
[V.]CASES OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY[62]
[VI.]DUAL AND TRIPLE BANSHEE HAUNTINGS[80]
[VII.]A SIMILAR CASE FROM SPAIN[98]
[VIII.]THE BANSHEE ON THE BATTLE-FIELD[124]
[IX.]THE BANSHEE AT SEA[136]
[X.]ALLEGED COUNTERPARTS OF THE BANSHEE[149]
[XI.]THE BANSHEE IN POETRY AND PROSE[176]
[XII.]THE BANSHEE IN SCOTLAND[196]
[XIII.]MY OWN EXPERIENCES WITH THE BANSHEE[232]
ADDENDA[247]

THE BANSHEE

CHAPTER I

THE DEFINITION AND ORIGIN OF BANSHEES

In a country, such as Ireland, that is characterised by an arrestive and wildly beautiful scenery, it is not at all surprising to find something in the nature of a ghost harmonising with the general atmosphere and surroundings, and that something, apparently so natural to Ireland, is the Banshee.

The name Banshee seems to be a contraction of the Irish Bean Sidhe, which is interpreted by some writers on the subject “A Woman of the Faire Race,” whilst by various other writers it is said to signify “The Lady of Death,” “The Woman of Sorrow,” “The Spirit of the Air,” and “The Woman of the Barrow.”

It is strictly a family ghost, and most authorities agree that it only haunts families of very ancient Irish lineage. Mr McAnnaly, for instance, remarks (in the chapter on Banshees in his “Irish Wonders”): “The Banshee attends only the old families, and though their descendants, through misfortune, may be brought down from high estate to ranks of peasant farmers, she never leaves nor forgets them till the last member has been gathered to his fathers in the churchyard.”

A writer in the Journal of the Cork Historical and Archæological Society (Vol. V., No. 44, pp. 227-229) quotes an extract from a work entitled “Kerry Records,” in which the following passage, relating to an elegiac poem written by Pierse Ferriter on Maurice Fitzgerald, occurs: “Aina, the Banshee who never wailed for any families who were not of Milesian blood, except the Geraldines, who became ‘more Irish than the Irish themselves’; and in a footnote (see p. 229) it is only ‘blood’ that can have a Banshee. Business men nowadays have something as good as ‘blood’—they have ‘brains and brass,’ by which they can compete with and enter into the oldest families in England and Ireland. Nothing, however, in an Irishman’s estimation, can replace ‘blue blood.’”