Banshees & the O'Briens
By
Garaidh Eóghan Ó Briain
Many of the great Irish families
in Ireland have attached to them their own personal Banshee. Banshee is Gaelic
meaning ‘fairy woman,’ bean: woman, and sídhe: fairy. A Banshee’s job is to
foretell of impending death either natural or tragic.
Hollywood’s version is usually an old woman with
dirty grey hair, long fingernails and rotten teeth, whose blood red eyes are
filled with such sorrow and hatred to look into them one would go instantly
insane and die. She would stalk her victims wailing and screaming, and if
confronted can rip a brave man to death with her claw like hands. Such is
Hollywood’s Banshee.
The Banshee of Ireland is much less evil and gory.
The Irish Banshee attaches herself to families usually with the O’ or Mac/Mc
preceding the surname and the courts of Irish kings, and does foretell of death
in the family to come. Understand that the Banshee does not bring death, but
warns that death is imminent in the family, and to prepare for a funeral. The
Banshee also serves as an escort to ensure that the loved one passes safely to
the other side.
Sometimes a Banshee is only heard keening (wailing) at
night whose cry can be so piercing that it shatters glass. In some parts of
Leinster, she is referred to as the bean chaointe (keening woman). In Kerry,
the keen is experienced as a "low,
pleasant singing;” in Tyrone as "the
sound of two boards being struck together;” and on Rathlin Island as "a thin, screeching sound somewhere between
the wail of a woman and the moan of an owl." When she decides to appear it is usually in
one of the aspects of the Celtic goddess of war and death known as Radhbh
(young woman), Macha (stately matron), and Mor-Rioghain (raddled old hag),
appearing in one of the following forms:
·
An old woman dressed in black with
long grey hair and covering her face with a veil.
·
An old woman with long white hair,
red eyes and dressed in a green dress.
·
A deathly pale woman with long red
hair dressed in a white dress sometimes a shroud.
·
A beautiful woman wearing a shroud.
·
A beautiful woman with silver-white
hair wearing a long shimmering silver dress.
·
A headless woman naked from the
waist up and carrying a bowl of blood.
The Banshee may also appear washing the blood
stained clothes of those who are about to die and is known as the
bean-nighe/washing woman, or in one of the animals associated with witchcraft
in Ireland such as a hooded crow, stoat (short haired weasel), hare or weasel.
There is a tale titled the Banshee’s Three, that tells almost the same story of the
O’Neill Banshee, the O’Donnell Banshee and the O’Brien Banshee being wailing
women of great beauty, who act as harbingers of death in the said families.1
The O’Brien Clan’s personal Banshee was named
Aibhill/Aibhinn. She lived about one and a quarter mile from Tralee (gray
shore) near Killaloe, in a cave called ‘Crage-liath.’ The cave is above the
earthworks and mound of stones that mark the 9th century fort of
Prince Lachtna who’s rough lane leads to the cave and on the way to the east is
a low rock amid ferns where water runs out into a small well called Tobereevul,
and on the west to a lonely valley that was the location of a long-forgotten
early battle of Brian against the Norsemen. Author Thomas W. Westropp (Count Clare historian at turn of 20th century),
is of the opinion that Aibhinn (Gaelic for ‘the lovely one’), may once have
been the goddess of the House of Cass, for whom the well and Craganeevul
commemorate her spirit.2
Before the
baptism of King Cairthinn, (first Christian Prince of his House, about A.D.
430), the ancestors of the Dalcassians may have worshipped Aibhinn on her holy
hill, and her equally lovely sister Aine, crowned with meadowsweet, on the
tamer mound of Knockaney. Whether, if so, they found her already enthroned at
Craglea on their conquest of the district, or whether the conqueror Lugad
consecrated the mountains to his patroness, it is now impossible to guess.
Aibhill, as Banshee, held her own. She is found usurping the place of the
‘Sybil’ in a translation of the Dies Iræ, in
unwonted companionship with King David, and she was a commonplace of local
threnodies during the eighteenth, and even the nineteenth, century. In the lake
below Rathblamaic in Inchiquin she has been seen in recent years (late as 1943),
with the twenty-five other banshees of Clare that call her their queen, washing
clothes before any impending disaster.3
King Brian Boru’s son, Murrough, consulted Aibhill
before the battle of Clontarf, and Aibhill appeared to King Brian during the
night of 22 April 1014, and informed him that he would never come away from the
battle at Clontarf on the morrow. Of this we are told by Westropp that “News came that his brave son’s
standard had fallen, and his page entreated him to ride back to the camp. ‘Oh,
God! thou boy,’ cried Brian, ‘retreat becomes us not, and I myself know that I
shall not depart alive, for Aibhill of Crag-Liath came to me last night, and
she told me that I should be killed today.”4
Irish are not the only people the Banshee
foretells doom for. In May, 1318, Richard de Clare, leader of the Normans, was
marching to what he supposed would be an easy victory over the O’Brien-O’Deas at
Dysert. The English came to the ‘glittering, running water of fish-containing
Fergus,’ when they saw a horrible bedlam washing armour and rich robes till the
red gore churned and splashed through her hands. Calling an
Irish ally to question her, de Clare heard that ‘the armour and clothes were of
the English, and few would escape immolation.’ ‘I am the Water Doleful One. I
lodge in the green fairy mounds (sidh) of the land, but I am of the
Tribes of Hell. Thither I invite you. Soon we shall be dwellers in one
country.’ Next day de Clare, his son, and nearly all his English troops lay
dead upon the fields near the ford of Dysert and for miles over the countryside
laid they’re lifeless bodies as they fled.5
For nearly
300 years there is no other Clare Banshee tale, till the famous one of 1642 in
the Memoires of Lady Fanshawe,
(published in 1665): The Lady Anne Fanshawe was visiting
from Scotland the Lady Honora O’Brien who was daughter of the Earl of Thomond,
She woke up one night, disturbed by the sound of a voice. She was in a
four-poster bed. Drawing aside its curtains she found she was looking straight
at the window. There she saw a woman’s face, pale and with huge sad eyes,
looking in at her.6
Surrounding the face was a
mass of red-gold hair, clearly visible in the moonlight. For some moments the
woman in the bed and the phantom at the window simply gazed at each other; then
the apparition spoke.
Three times it spoke loud and in a tone that the woman has never
heard off. “Ahone”, and then with a sigh
more like a wind than a breath she vanished. Her body looked more like a thick
of cloud than a substance the Scottish woman thought.
Lady Fanshawe woke her husband
she had slept through all of it and then told him on what she had witness. He
did not mock her story and told her that such apparitions were well known in
Ireland. In the morning, Lady Honora informed her guests that a cousin of hers
had died that night in the castle, at about two o’clock in the morning.
She
herself had been up all night, but hoped that nothing had disturbed her
visitors. Her reasons for concern was that whenever a member of the O’ Brien family
was at the point of death, the shape of a woman appeared. She appears in the
very room where she had inadvertently lodged her guests. According to Lady
Honora, the banshee was the phantom of a woman who had been seduced and then
murdered long ago by the castle’s lord. The body had been buried in
the grounds beneath the window.
Other
stories
In 1437, King James I of Scotland was approached by
an Irish Banshee who foretold his murder at the instigation of the Earl of
Atholl.
In 1776,
one Harrison R. Lewin went to Dublin on business and was gone a week. In his
absence the ‘young people’ went to a friend’s house for the evening. The road
passed an old church (Kilchrist), which was unenclosed, standing in an open
field. As the party returned under bright moonlight, they were startled by loud
keening and wailing from the direction of the ruin. Coming in sight, all
clearly saw a little old woman with long white hair and a black cloak running
to and fro on the top of the side wall, clapping her hands and wailing. The
young men, leaving the girls together on the road, sent some of their number to
watch each end of the building, and the remainder entered and climbed up on the
wall. The apparition vanished as they approached the church, and, after a
careful search, could not be found. The party, thoroughly frightened, hurried
home, and found their mother in even greater terror. She had been sitting in
the window when a great raven flapped three times at the glass, and, while she
told them, the bird again flew against the window. Some days later, news
arrived from Dublin that Ross Lewin had died suddenly on the very evening of
the apparition and omen.7
Not only
the Scot’s king and marauding Normans were visited by Banshees, but the Stamers
and Westropp families of English origin as well.
Near Quin,
there were numerous ‘authentic instances’ recorded. The Corofin Banshees,
however, did not lag behind the age by maintaining aristocratic prejudices, for
one, at least, used to sit near the cross road leading to the workhouse and
foretell the deaths of the poor.8
The
popular belief in Clare, writes Westropp, is that each leading Irish race had a
Banshee, Eevul (Aibhill/Aibhinn), the Banshee of the royal O’Briens,
ruling over twenty-five other banshees always attendant on her progresses. The
stream from Caherminaun to Dough, (the Daelach), was called the ‘Banshee’s
Brook,’ and when, as sometimes happens after an unusually dry summer, the water
gets red from iron scum, everyone is on the alert to hear the rustling flight
of the banshee, (not apparently Eevul), and her attendants through the air. In
the prevailing suspense someone generally succeeds, and then there is unrest
and fear until a death removes the uncertainty.9
No-one wishes a visit from a Banshee
no matter how alluring she is but she does serve a purpose to the family by
letting them know that they should start making preparations for a funeral.
SOURCES:
3 3 Westropp.
4 4 True Irish Ghost Stories,
by St. John D. Seymour and Harry L. Neligan, [1914], at sacred-texts.com
5 5 Westropp.
7 7 Westropp.
8 8 Westropp.
9 9 Westropp.
In 1959, he won the Sullivan Award
as the United States’ outstanding amateur athlete. He was elected to the United
States Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1974 and the United States Olympic Hall
of Fame in 1984.
