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 of the 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 had come 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 the lights 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 house I
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 was dying, 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 the hall-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 into _Cloon_ to 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 while howling, 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 of the 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 of _those_--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 big house, 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 night when 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.
IV
IN THE WAY
IV
IN THE WAY
_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 way_
the 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 one time, 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're
_in 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 being _in the way_ I wouldn't have stopped in it, and
my seven fine children would be with me now. Took away they were by
_them_ and 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 the
water, 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 and _they_ came 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."