The Banshee at the Bridge

“The banshee,9 Misther Harry? Well, sir, as I was strivin’ to tell ye, I was goin’ home from work one day, from Mr. Cassidy’s that I tould ye of, in the dusk o’ the evenin’. I had more nor a mile – aye, it was nearer two mile – to thrack to where I was lodgin’ with a dacent widdy woman I knew, Biddy Maguire by name, so as to be near me work.
“It was dark the first week in November,10 an’ a lonesome road I had to travel, an’ dark enough, with threes above it; an’ about halfways there was a bit iv a bridge I had to cross, over one o’ them little sthrames that runs into the Doddher. I walked on in the middle iv the road, for there was no toe-path that time, Misther Harry, nor for many a long day afther that. But, as I was sayin’, I walked along till I come nigh upon the bridge, where the road was a bit open, an’ there, right enough, I seen the hog’s back o’ the ould-fashioned bidge that used to be there till it was pulled down years ago, an’ a white mist steamin’ up out o’ the wather all around it.
“Well, now, Misther Harry, often as I’d passed by the place before, that night it seemed sthrange to me, an’ like a place ye might see in a dhrame; an’ as I come up to it I began to feel a cowld wind blowin’ through the hollow o’ me heart. Mushi Thomas, sez I to meself, is it yerself that’s in it, sez I. So I put a bould face on it, an’ I made a sthruggle to set one foot afore the other, ontil I came to the rise o’ the bridge. And there, God be good to us! in the cantle o’ the wall I seen an ould woman, as I thought, sittin’ on her hunkers, all crouched together, an’ her head bowed down, seemin’ly in the greatest affliction.
such a pair iv eyes as they wor…as cowld as the moon in a bog-hold iv a frosty night.
“Well sir, I pities the ould craythur, no matther the mortal fright I was in, so I up an’ sez to her, ‘That’s a could lodgin’ for ye, ma’am.’ Well, she tuk no more notice o’ me than if I hadn’t let a word out o’ me, but kep’ rockin’ herself to an’ fro, as if her heart was breakin’. So I sez to her again, ‘Eh, ma’am, is there anythin’ the matther with ye?’ An’ I made for to touch her on the showldher, ownly somethin’ stopped me, for as I looked closer at her I saw she was no more an ould woman nor she was an ould cat.
“The first thing I tuk notice to, Misther Harry, was her hair that was sthreamin’ down over her showldhers, an’ a good yard on the ground of aich side o’ her. O, but that was the hair! The likes iv it I never seen on mortial woman, young or ould, before nor sence. It grew as sthrong out iv her as out iv e’er a young slip iv a girl ye could see; but the color iv it was a mysthery to describe. The first squint I got iv it I thought it silvery gray, like an ould crone’s; but when I got up beside her I saw, but the glance o’ the sky, it was a sort iv an Iscariot color, an’ a shine out iv it like floss silk. It ran over her showldhers and the two shapely arms she was lanin’ her head on, for ll the world like Mary Magdalen’s in a picther. And then I persaved that the gray cloak and the green gownd undernaith it was made of no earthy matherial I ever laid eyes on.
“Well, Misther Harry, the word wasn’t out o’ me mouth afore she turned her face on me. Musha, Misther Harry, but ’twas that was the awfullest apparition ever I seen, the face iv her as she looked up at me! God forgive me for sayin’ it, but ’twas like no face I could mintion – as pale as a corpse, an’ most o’ freckles on it, like the freckles on a turkey’s eff; an’ two eyes sewn in with red thread, from the terrible power o’ cryin’ they had to do; an’ such a pair iv eyes as they wor, Misther Harry, as blue as tow forget-me-nots, an’ as cowld as the moon in a bog-hold iv a frosty night, an’ a dead-an’-live look in them that sent a cowld shiver through the marow o’ me bones. By the mortial! ye could have rung a taycupful o’ cowld paspiration out o’ the hair o’ me head that minute, so ye could.
“Well, I thought the life ‘ud lave me intirely when she riz up from her hunkers, till, bedad! she looked mostly as tall as Nelson’s Pillar. An’ with those two eyes gazin’ back at me, an’ her two arms stretched out before her, an’ a keine* out iv her that riz the hair o’ me scalp till it was as stiff as the hog’s bristles in a new hearth broom, away she glides – yes, glides – around the angle o’ the bridge, an’ down with her into the sthrame that ran underhernaith it.
” ‘Twas then I began to suspect what she was. I made a great sthruggle to get me two legs into a fast throt, in spite o’ the spavin o’ fright the pair o’ them wor in. How I brought meself home that same night the Lord in heaven ownly knows. For I never could tell. But I must ha’ tumbled agin the door, and shot in head foremost into the middle iv the floork where I lay in a dead swoon for mostly an hour. The first I knew was Mrs. Maguire stannin’ over me with a jorum o’ punch she was pourin’ down me throath to bring back the life into me, an’ me head in a pool iv cowld wather she dashed over me in her first fright.
“Arrah, Misther Connolly…What ails ye to put the scare on a lone woman,”… sez she.
” Arrah, Misther Connolly,’ she sez, ‘what ails ye, to put the scare on a lone woman like that?’ sez she.
” ‘O, glory be to God!’ sez I. ‘But I thought I was in purgathory at the laste, not to mintion an uglier place,’ sez I, ‘ownly it’s too cowld I find meself, an’ not too hot,’ sez I.
” ‘Faix, an’ maybe ye wor more nor halfways there, ownly for me,’ sez she. ‘But what’s come to you at all, at all? Is it your own fetch ye spirit ye seen, Misther Connolly?”
” ‘Aw, naboslish (don’t mind it)! sez I. ‘Never mind what I seen.’
“So, by degrees, I began to come to a little; an’ that’s the way I met the banshee, Misther Harry!”
“But how did you know it really was the banshee after all, Thomas?”
“Begor, sir, I knew the apparition of her well enough, but ’twas confirmed by a sarcumstance that occurred the same time. There was a Misther O’Nale was come on a visit, ye must know, to a place in the neighborhood – one o’ the ould O’Nales iv the County Tyrone, a rale ould Irish family – an’ the banshee was heard keinin’ round the house that same night, by more than one that was in it; an’ sure enough, Misther Harry, he was found dead in his bed the next mornin’. So if it wasn’t the banshee I seen that time, I’d like to know what else it could a’ been.”
-John Todhunter (1809-73)

9. The banshee, the female apparation who wails before the death of a human (but only for members of old Irish families), is sometimes accompanied by a coach-a-bower—a huge black coach which is pulled by headless black horses, and driven by a dullahan, a headless phantom. Duffy’s Sixpenny Magazine (Dublin) tells us that “the sinister, coffin-mounted coach rumbles to the door of a dying Irishman or Irishwoman, but should anyone be so foolhardy as to open it a basin of blood will be thrown in his face.” The origin of the dullahan is obscure. According to Thomas Crofton Croker, it is believed to have emanated from Norway where, folklore has it, the heads of corpses were cut off enfeeble their ghosts, however, W.B. Yeats offers the suggestion, that the dullahan may have descended from the giant of Irish mythology who swam across the Channel with his head in his teeth.
10. Many Irish folktales dealing with fairies are laid in November, the third fairy festival of the year. The first is May Eve which, however, occurs only every seventh year when they fight furiously for the harvest—the choicest ears of grain, of course, belong to them. The fighting can be detected in the shirling of the wind and the debris of the fields and woods flying about. Witnessing this, the peasantry respectfully remove their hats and murmur, “God bless the good people.”
The second of the fairy festivals occurs on midsummer Eve. At this time, when the bonfires are kindled on every hill in honor of Saint John, the fairies are at their merriest—and usually most lustful. Sometimes, on Midsummer Eve, they will steal away beautiful girls for their brides.
The November Eve festival sees them at their wickedest—and gloomiest—for this is the first night of winter, according to the old Gaelic reckoning. On this night, the fairies dance with the ghosts, the pooka is abroad, and witches make their spells. After November Eve the blackberries are no longer wholesome because pooka has spoiled them.
*The Celtic form for keen; to wail or howl in mournin for the dead.