the preparations went forward, as usual, for the wedding
entertainment on Sunday. But on Friday night he grew restless
and feverish, and on Saturday (yesterday) morning felt so ill,
that it was deemed necessary to obtain additional medical
advice. Two physicians and a surgeon met in consultation about
twelve o’clock in the day, and the dreadful intelligence was
announced, that unless a change, hardly hoped for, took place
before night, death must happen within twenty-four hours after.
The wound it seems, had been too tightly bandaged, and
otherwise injudiciously treated. The physicians were right in
their anticipations. No favourable symptom appeared, and long
before we reached Spring House every ray of hope had vanished.
The scene we witnessed on our arrival would have wrung the
heart of a demon. We heard briefly at the gate that Mr. Charles
was upon his death-bed. When we reached the house, the
information was confirmed by the servant who opened the door.
But just as we entered, we were horrified by the most appalling
screams issuing from the staircase. My mother thought she heard
the voice of poor Mrs. Mac Carthy, and sprung forward. We
followed, and on ascending a few steps of the stairs, we found
a young woman, in a state of frantic passion, struggling
furiously with two men-servants, whose united strength was
hardly sufficient to prevent her rushing up stairs over the
body of Mrs. Mac Carthy, who was lying in strong hysterics upon
the steps. This, I afterwards discovered, was the unhappy girl
I before described, who was attempting to gain access to
Charles’s room, to ‘get his forgiveness,’ as she said, ‘before
he went away to accuse her for having killed him.’ This wild
idea was mingled with another, which seemed to dispute with the
former possession of her mind. In one sentence she called on
Charles to forgive her, in the next she would denounce James
Ryan as the murderer both of Charles and her. At length she was
torn away; and the last words I heard her scream were, ‘James
Ryan, ’twas you killed him, and not I—’twas you killed him,
and not I.’
“Mrs. Mac Carthy, on recovering, fell into the arms of my
mother, whose presence seemed a great relief to her. She wept
the first tears, I was told, that she had shed since the fatal
accident. She conducted us to Charles’s room, who she said, had
desired to see us the moment of our arrival, as he found his
end approaching, and wished to devote the last hours of his
existence to uninterrupted prayer and meditation. We found him
perfectly calm, resigned, and even cheerful. He spoke of the
awful event which was at hand with courage and confidence, and
treated it as a doom for which he had been preparing ever since
his former remarkable illness, and which he never once doubted
was truly foretold to him. He bade us farewell with the air of
one who was about to travel a short and easy journey; and we
left him with impressions which, notwithstanding all their
anguish, will, I trust, never entirely forsake us.
“Poor Mrs. Mac Carthy——but I am just called away. There seems
a slight stir in the family; perhaps——”
The above letter was never finished. The enclosure to which it more
than once alludes, told the sequel briefly, and it is all that I have
farther learned of this branch of the Mac Carthy family. Before the
sun had gone down upon Charles’s seven-and-twentieth birth-day, his
soul had gone to render its last account to its Creator.
“BANSHEE, correctly written she-fairies or women fairies,
credulously supposed, by the common people, to be so affected
to certain families, that they are heard to sing mournful
lamentations about their houses at night, whenever any of the
family labours under a sickness which is to end in death. But
no families which are not of an ancient and noble stock are
believed to be honoured with this fairy privilege.”—O’BRIEN’S
_Irish Dictionary_.
For accounts of the appearance of the Irish Banshee, see
“Personal Sketches, &c. by Sir Jonah Barrington;” Miss Lefanu’s
Memoirs of her Grandmother, Mrs. Frances Sheridan (1824,) p.
32; “The Memoirs of Lady Fanshaw” (quoted by Sir Walter Scott
in a note on “the Lady of the Lake,”) &c.
Sir Walter Scott terms the belief in the appearance of the
Banshee “one of the most beautiful” of the leading
superstitions of Europe. In his “Letters on Demonology,” he
says that “several families of the Highlands of Scotland
anciently laid claim to the distinction of an attendant spirit,
who performed the office of the Irish Banshee,” and
particularly refers to the supernatural cries and lamentations
which foreboded the death of the gallant Mac Lean of Lochbuy.
“The Welsh Gwrâch y Rhibyn (or the hag of the Dribble) bears
some resemblance to the Irish Banshee, being regarded as an
omen of death. She is said to come after dusk and flap her
leathern wings against the window where she warns of death, and
in a broken, howling tone, to call on the one who is to quit
mortality by his or her name several times, as thus,
_A-a-a-n-ni-i-i-i! Anni._”—_MS. Communication from_ DR. OWEN
PUGHE. For some farther particulars, see, in “A Relation of
Apparitions, &c. by the Rev. Edmund Jones,” his account of the
_Kyhirraeth_, “a doleful foreboding noise before death;” and
Howell’s “Cambrian Superstitions,” (Tipton, 1831,) p. 31.
The reader will probably remember the White Lady of the House
of Brandenburgh, and the fairy Melusine, who usually
prognosticated the recurrence of mortality in some noble family
of Poitou. Prince, in his “Worthies of Devon,” records the
appearance of a white bird performing the same office for the
worshipful lineage of Oxenham.
“In the Tyrol, too, they believe in a spirit which looks in at
the window of the house in which a person is to die (_Deutsche
Sagen_, No. 266;) the white woman with a veil over her head
(267,) answers to the Banshee; but the tradition of the
_Klage-weib_ (mourning woman,) in the _Lüneburger Heath_
(_Spiels Archiv._ ii. 297,) resembles it still more closely. On
stormy nights, when the moon shines faintly through the
fleeting clouds, she stalks, of gigantic stature, with
death-like aspect, and black hollow eyes, wrapt in
grave-clothes which float in the wind, and stretches her
immense arm over the solitary hut, uttering lamentable cries in
the tempestuous darkness. Beneath the roof over which the
_Klage-weib_ has leaned, one of the inmates must die in the
course of the month.”—THE BROTHERS GRIMM, _and MS.
Communication from_ DR. WILLIAM GRIMM.
LEGENDS OF THE PHOOKA.
“Ne let house-fires, nor lightnings’ helpless harms,
Ne let the _Pouke_, nor other evil spright,
Ne let mischievous witches with their charms,
Ne let hobgoblins, names whose sense we see not,
Fray us with things that be not.”
SPENSER.
THE SPIRIT HORSE.
XIV.
The history of Morty Sullivan ought to be a warning to all young men
to stay at home, and to live decently and soberly if they can, and not
to go roving about the world. Morty, when he had just turned of
fourteen, ran away from his father and mother, who were a mighty
respectable old couple, and many and many a tear they shed on his
account. It is said they both died heart-broken for his loss: all they
ever learned about him was that he went on board of a ship bound to
America.
Thirty years after the old couple had been laid peacefully in their
graves, there came a stranger to Beerhaven inquiring after them—it
was their son Morty; and, to speak the truth of him, his heart did
seem full of sorrow when he heard that his parents were dead and
gone;—but what else could he expect to hear? Repentance generally
comes when it is too late.
Morty Sullivan, however, as an atonement for his sins, was recommended
to perform a pilgrimage to the blessed chapel of Saint Gobnate, which
is in a wild place called Ballyvourney.
This he readily undertook: and willing to lose no time, commenced his
journey the same afternoon. He had not proceeded many miles before the
evening came on: there was no moon, and the star-light was obscured by
a thick fog, which ascended from the valleys. His way was through a
mountainous country, with many cross-paths and by-ways, so that it was
difficult for a stranger like Morty to travel without a guide. He was
anxious to reach his destination, and exerted himself to do so; but
the fog grew thicker and thicker, and at last he became doubtful if
the track he was in led to the blessed chapel of Saint Gobnate. But
seeing a light which he imagined not to be far off, he went towards
it, and when he thought himself close to it, the light suddenly seemed
at a great distance, twinkling dimly through the fog. Though Morty
felt some surprise at this, he was not disheartened, for he thought
that it was a light sent by the holy Saint Gobnate to guide his feet
through the mountains to her chapel.
And thus did he travel for many a mile, continually, as he believed,
approaching the light, which would suddenly start off to a great
distance. At length he came so close as to perceive that the light
came from a fire: seated beside which he plainly saw an old
woman;—then, indeed, his faith was a little shaken, and much did he
wonder that both the fire and the old woman should travel before him,
so many weary miles, and over such uneven roads.
“In the holy names of the pious Gobnate, and of her preceptor Saint
Abban,” said Morty, “how can that burning fire move on so fast before
me, and who can that old woman be sitting beside the moving fire?”
These words had no sooner passed Morty’s lips than he found himself,
without taking another step, close to this wonderful fire, beside
which the old woman was sitting munching her supper. With every wag of
the old woman’s jaw her eyes would roll fiercely upon Morty, as if she
was angry at being disturbed; and he saw with more astonishment than
ever that her eyes were neither black, nor blue, nor gray, nor hazel,
like the human eye, but of a wild red colour, like the eye of a
ferret. If before he wondered at the fire, much greater was his wonder
at the old woman’s appearance; and stout-hearted as he was, he could
not but look upon her with fear—judging, and judging rightly, that it
was for no good purpose her supping in so unfrequented a place, and at
so late an hour, for it was near midnight. She said not one word,
but munched and munched away, while Morty looked at her in
silence.—“What’s your name?” at last demanded the old hag, a
sulphureous puff coming out of her mouth, her nostrils distending, and
her eyes growing redder than ever, when she had finished her question.
Plucking up all his courage, “Morty Sullivan,” replied he “at your
service;” meaning the latter words only in civility.
“_Ubbubbo!_” said the old woman, “we’ll soon see that;” and the red
fire of her eyes turned into a pale green colour. Bold and fearless as
Morty was, yet much did he tremble at hearing this dreadful
exclamation: he would have fallen down on his knees and prayed to
Saint Gobnate, or any other saint, for he was not particular; but he
was so petrified with horror, that he could not move in the slightest
way, much less go down on his knees.
“Take hold of my hand, Morty,” said the old woman: “I’ll give you a
horse to ride that will soon carry you to your journey’s end.” So
saying, she led the way, the fire going before them;—it is beyond
mortal knowledge to say how, but on it went, shooting out bright
tongues of flame, and flickering fiercely.
Presently they came to a natural cavern in the side of the mountain,
and the old hag called aloud in a most discordant voice for her horse!
In a moment a jet-black steed started from its gloomy stable, the
rocky floor whereof rung with a sepulchral echo to the clanging
hoofs.
“Mount, Morty, mount!” cried she, seizing him with supernatural
strength, and forcing him upon the back of the horse. Morty finding
human power of no avail, muttered, “O that I had spurs!” and tried to
grasp the horse’s mane; but he caught at a shadow; it nevertheless
bore him up and bounded forward with him, now springing down a fearful
precipice, now clearing the rugged bed of a torrent, and rushing like
the dark midnight storm through the mountains.
The following morning Morty Sullivan was discovered by some pilgrims
(who came that way after taking their rounds at Gougane Barra) lying
on the flat of his back, under a steep cliff, down which he had been
flung by the Phooka. Morty was severely bruised by the fall, and he is
said to have sworn on the spot, by the hand of O’Sullivan (and that is
no small oath),[15] never again to take a full quart bottle of whisky
with him on a pilgrimage.
[15] “Nulla manus,
Tam liberalis
Atque generalis
Atque universalis
Quam Sullivanis.”
DANIEL O’ROURKE.
XV.
People may have heard of the renowned adventures of Daniel O’Rourke,
but how few are there who know that the cause of all his perils, above
and below, was neither more nor less than his having slept under the
walls of the Phooka’s tower! I knew the man well; he lived at the
bottom of Hungry Hill, just at the right hand side of the road as you
go towards Bantry. An old man was he at the time that he told me the
story, with gray hair, and a red nose; and it was on the 25th of June,
1813, that I heard it from his own lips, as he sat smoking his pipe
under the old poplar tree, on as fine an evening as ever shone from
the sky. I was going to visit the caves in Dursey Island, having spent
the morning at Glengariff.
“I am often _axed_ to tell it, sir,” said he, “so that this is not the
first time. The master’s son, you see, had come from beyond foreign
parts in France and Spain, as young gentlemen used to go, before
Bonaparte or any such was heard of; and sure enough there was a dinner
given to all the people on the ground, gentle and simple, high and
low, rich and poor. The _ould_ gentlemen were the gentlemen, after
all, saving your honour’s presence. They’d swear at a body a little,
to be sure, and may be, give one a cut of a whip now and then, but we
were no losers by it in the end;—and they were so easy and civil, and
kept such rattling houses, and thousands of welcomes;—and there was
no grinding for rent, and few agents; and there was hardly a tenant on
the estate that did not taste of his landlord’s bounty often and often
in the year;—but now it’s another thing: no matter for that, sir; for
I’d better be telling you my story.
“Well, we had every thing of the best, and plenty of it; and we ate,
and we drank, and we danced, and the young master by the same token
danced with Peggy Barry, from the Bohereen—a lovely young couple they
were, though they are both low enough now. To make a long story short,
I got, as a body may say, the same thing as tipsy almost; for I can’t
remember ever at all, no ways, how it was I left the place: only I did
leave it, that’s certain. Well, I thought, for all that, in myself,
I’d just step to Molly Cronohan’s, the fairy woman, to speak a word
about the bracket heifer that was bewitched; and so as I was crossing
the stepping-stones of the ford of Ballyasheenough, and was looking up
at the stars and blessing myself—for why? it was Lady-day—I missed
my foot, and souse I fell into the water. ‘Death alive!’ thought I,
‘I’ll be drowned now!’ However, I began swimming, swimming, swimming
away for the dear life, till at last I got ashore, somehow or other,
but never the one of me can tell how, upon a _dissolute_ island.
“I wandered and wandered about there, without knowing where I
wandered, until at last I got into a big bog. The moon was shining as
bright as day, or your fair lady’s eyes, sir, (with your pardon for
mentioning her,) and I looked east and west, and north and south, and
every way, and nothing did I see but bog, bog, bog;—I could never
find out how I got into it; and my heart grew cold with fear, for sure
and certain I was that it would be my _berrin_ place. So I sat down
upon a stone which, as good luck would have it, was close by me, and I
began to scratch my head and sing the _Ullagone_—when all of a sudden
the moon grew black, and I looked up, and saw something for all the
world as if it was moving down between me and it, and I could not tell
what it was. Down it came with a pounce, and looked at me full in the
face; and what was it but an eagle? as fine a one as ever flew from
the kingdom of Kerry.
“So he looked at me in the face, and says he to me, ‘Daniel O’Rourke,’
says he, ‘how do you do?’ ‘Very well, I thank you, sir,’ says I: ‘I
hope you’re well;’ wondering out of my senses all the time how an
eagle came to speak like a Christian. ‘What brings you here, Dan?’
says he. ‘Nothing at all, sir,’ says I: ‘only I wish I was safe home
again.’ ‘Is it out of the Island you want to go, Dan?’ says he. ‘’Tis,
sir,’ says I: so I up and told him how I had taken a drop too much and
fell into the water; how I swam to the Island; and how I got into the
bog, and did not know my way out of it. ‘Dan,’ says he, after a
minute’s thought, ‘though it is very improper for you to get drunk on
Lady-day, yet as you are a decent sober man, who ’tends mass well, and
never flings stones at me nor mine, nor cries out after us in the
fields—my life for yours,’ says he; ‘so get up on my back, and grip
me well for fear you’d fall off, and I’ll fly you out of the bog.’ ‘I
am afraid,’ says I, ‘your honour’s making game of me; for who ever
heard of riding a horseback on an eagle before?’ ‘’Pon the honour of a
gentleman,’ says he, putting his right foot on his breast, ‘I am quite
in earnest; and so now either take my offer or starve in the
bog—besides, I see that your weight is sinking the stone.’
“It was true enough as he said, for I found the stone every minute
going from under me. I had no choice; so thinks I to myself, faint
heart never won fair lady, and this is fair persuadance:—‘I thank
your honour,’ says I, ‘for the loan of your civility; and I’ll take
your kind offer.’ I therefore mounted upon the back of the eagle, and
held him tight enough by the throat, and up he flew in the air like a
lark. Little I knew the trick he was going to serve me. Up—up—up—I
know not how far up he flew.
“‘Why, then,’ said I to him,—thinking he did not know the right road
home—very civilly, because why?—I was in his power entirely;—‘sir,’
says I, ‘please your honour’s glory, and with humble submission to
your better judgment, if you’d fly down a bit, you’re now just over my
cabin, and I could put down there, and many thanks to your worship.’
“‘_Arrah_, Dan,’ said he, ‘do you think me a fool? Look down in the
next field, and don’t you see two men and a gun? By my word it would
be no joke to be shot this way, to oblige a drunken blackguard that I
picked up off of a _cowld_ stone in a bog.’ ‘Bother you,’ said I to
myself, but I did not speak out, for where was the use? Well, sir, up
he kept, flying, flying, and I asking him every minute to fly down,
and all to no use. ‘Where in the world are you going, sir?’ says I to
him. ‘Hold your tongue, Dan,’ says he: ‘mind your own business, and
don’t be interfering with the business of other people.’ ‘Faith, this
is my business, I think,’ says I. ‘Be quiet, Dan,’ says he: so I said
no more.
“At last, where should we come to, but to the moon itself. Now you
can’t see it from this, but there is, or there was in my time, a
reaping-hook sticking out of the side of the moon, this way, (drawing
the figure thus [in-line illustration] on the ground with the end of
his stick.)
“‘Dan,’ said the eagle, ‘I’m tired with this long fly; I had no
notion ’twas so far.’ ‘And my lord, sir,’ said I, ‘who in the world
_axed_ you to fly so far—was it I? did not I beg, and pray, and
beseech you to stop half an hour ago?’ ‘There’s no use talking, Dan,’
said he; ‘I’m tired bad enough, so you must get off, and sit down on
the moon until I rest myself.’ ‘Is it sit down on the moon?’ said I;
‘is it upon that little round thing, then? why, then, sure I’d fall
off in a minute, and be _kilt_ and split, and smashed all to bits: you
are a vile deceiver,—so you are.’ ‘Not at all, Dan,’ said he: ‘you
can catch fast hold of the reaping-hook that’s sticking out of the
side of the moon, and ’twill keep you up.’ ‘I won’t, then,’ said I.
‘May be not,’ said he, quite quiet. ‘If you don’t, my man, I shall
just give you a shake, and one slap of my wing, and send you down to
the ground, where every bone in your body will be smashed as small as
a drop of dew on a cabbage-leaf in the morning.’ ‘Why, then, I’m in a
fine way,’ said I to myself, ‘ever to have come along with the likes
of you;’ and so giving him a hearty curse in Irish, for fear he’d know
what I said, I got off his back with a heavy heart, took a hold of the
reaping hook, and sat down upon the moon; and a mighty cold seat it
was, I can tell you that.
“When he had me there fairly landed, he turned about on me, and said,
‘Good morning to you, Daniel O’Rourke,’ said he: ‘I think I’ve nicked
you fairly now. You robbed my nest last year,’ (’twas true enough for
him, but how he found it out is hard to say,) ‘and in return you are
freely welcome to cool your heels dangling upon the moon like a
cock-throw.’
“‘Is that all, and is this the way you leave me, you brute, you?’ says
I. ‘You ugly unnatural _baste_, and is this the way you serve me at
last? Bad luck to yourself, with your hooked nose, and to all your
breed, you blackguard.’ ’Twas all to no manner of use: he spread out
his great big wings, burst out a laughing, and flew away like
lightning. I bawled after him to stop; but I might have called and
bawled for ever, without his minding me. Away he went, and I never saw
him from that day to this—sorrow fly away with him! You may be sure I
was in a disconsolate condition, and kept roaring out for the bare
grief, when all at once a door opened right in the middle of the moon,
creaking on its hinges as if it had not been opened for a month
before. I suppose they never thought of greasing ’em, and out there
walks—who do you think but the man in the moon himself? I knew him by
his bush.
“‘Good morrow to you, Daniel O’Rourke,’ said he: ‘How do you do?’
‘Very well, thank your honour,’ said I. ‘I hope your honour’s well.’
‘What brought you here, Dan?’ said he. So I told him how I was a
little overtaken in liquor at the master’s, and how I was cast on a
_dissolute_ island, and how I lost my way in the bog, and how the
thief of an eagle promised to fly me out of it, and how instead of
that he had flew me up to the moon.
“‘Dan,’ said the man in the moon, taking a pinch of snuff when I was
done, ‘you must not stay here.’ ‘Indeed, sir,’ says I, ‘’tis much
against my will I’m here at all; but how am I to go back?’ ‘That’s
your business,’ said he, ‘Dan: mine is to tell you that here you must
not stay; so be off in less than no time.’ ‘I’m doing no harm,’ says
I, ‘only holding on hard by the reaping-hook, lest I fall off.’
‘That’s what you must not do, Dan,’ says he. ‘Pray, sir,’ says I, ‘may
I ask how many you are in family, that you would not give a poor
traveller lodging: I’m sure ’tis not so often you’re troubled with
strangers coming to see you, for ’tis a long way.’ ‘I’m by myself,
Dan,’ says he; ‘but you’d better let go the reaping-hook.’ ‘Indeed,
and with your leave,’ says I, ‘I’ll not let go the grip, and the more
you bids me, the more I won’t let go;—so I will.’ ‘You had better,
Dan,’ says he again. ‘Why, then, my little fellow,’ says I, taking the
whole weight of him with my eye from head to foot, ‘there are two
words to that bargain, and I’ll not budge, but you may if you like.’
‘We’ll see how that is to be,’ says he; and back he went, giving the
door such a great bang after him (for it was plain he was huffed),
that I thought the moon and all would fall down with it.
“Well, I was preparing myself to try strength with him, when back
again he comes, with the kitchen cleaver in his hand, and without
saying a word, he gives two bangs to the handle of the reaping-hook
that was keeping me up, and _whap_! it came in two. ‘Good morning to
you, Dan,’ says the spiteful little old blackguard, when he saw me
cleanly falling down with a bit of the handle in my hand: ‘I thank
you for your visit, and fair weather after you, Daniel.’ I had not
time to make any answer to him, for I was tumbling over and over, and
rolling and rolling at the rate of a fox-hunt. ‘Now help me,’ says I,
‘but this is a pretty pickle for a decent man to be seen in at this
time of night; I am now sold fairly.’ The word was not out of my
mouth, when whiz! what should fly by close to my ear but a flock of
wild geese; all the way from my own bog of Ballyasheenough, else how
should they know _me_? The _ould_ gander, who was their general,
turning about his head, cried out to me, ‘Is that you, Dan?’ ‘The
same,’ said I, not a bit daunted now at what he said, for I was by
this time used to all kinds of _bedevilment_, and, besides, I knew him
of _ould_. ‘Good morrow to you,’ says he, ‘Daniel O’Rourke: how are
you in health this morning?’ ‘Very well, sir,’ says I, ‘I thank you
kindly,’ drawing my breath, for I was mightily in want of some. ‘I
hope your honour’s the same.’ ‘I think ’tis falling you are, Daniel,’
says he. ‘You may say that, sir,’ says I. ‘And where are you going all
the way so fast?’ said the gander. So I told him how I had taken the
drop, and how I came on the island, and how I lost my way in the bog,
and how the thief of an eagle flew me up to the moon, and how the man
in the moon turned me out. ‘Dan,’ said he, ‘I’ll save you: put out
your hand and catch me by the leg, and I’ll fly you home.’ ‘Sweet is
your hand in a pitcher of honey, my jewel,’ says I, though all the
time I thought in myself that I don’t much trust you; but there was no
help, so I caught the gander by the leg, and away I and the other
geese flew after him as fast as hops.