Banshee, Death Omen or Folklore?
Lady Fanshawe Wrote of a Keening Ghostly Female Foretelling Death
Sep 19, 2008
The banshee, according to Celtic folklore, is a female death omen attached to clans in Scotland and Ireland. There are variations of her appearance. She’s a beautiful young long-haired woman wearing a green dress and grey cloak, or a matron garbed in white or red or a crone wearing a grey hooded cloak, sheet or grave robe. According to legend, banshees can shapeshift into animals.
O’Brien “Banshee”
This was published in Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe. In 1692, Sir Richard, her husband, and she were overnight guests at the O’Brien’s castle, which was surrounded by a moat. At midnight, an unnatural keening woke her. She looked out the window and saw a woman with disheveled reddish hair, garbed in ancient Irish dress. The entity keened for a while before vanishing.
In the morning, Fanshawe told her host what happened. He said a close relative died in the castle during the night. He told her the banshee always appeared before a death in the family. One of his ancestors married a peasant, bringing dishonor to the family, so the man drowned her in the moat to restore his respect. The family believed she was the woman’s ghost. This is similar to the Ghostly Drummer of Cortachy, which gives credence to the theory that the specter wasn’t a banshee, but was an apparition or a haunting. Parallels: the man was drowned by a member of the Scottish Ogilvy Clan and his phantom drummed before deaths in their family.
Banshee and Other Death Omens
- Mr. Lewin was in Dublin on business in 1776. His daughter, Jane, and her companions visited a friend. As the group returned home in bright moonlight, they were startled by loud keening coming from the direction of an old church’s ruins. All saw an old woman with long white hair, wearing a black cloak, running back and forth on the top of a wall and clapping her hands. As they got close to her, she vanished. The group, extremely frightened, hurried away. Mrs. Lewin was more upset than they were. She had been sitting by the window when a huge raven flapped at the glass three times. While she related this to the group, the bird again flew against the window. Several days later, they learned Lewin suddenly died on the night of the incidents.
- The Westropps’ death omen appeared in the form of a white owl. When John Westropp died the family and servants heard its keening. The owl last appeared in 1909.
- The night Mrs. Stamer died in January, 1883, the banshee’s keening and sounds of a death coach were heard.
- Mr. Casey, of Ruan, heard a banshee cry when his father died.
- When Dr. MacNamara of Corofin died, his family and others heard a banshee. The locals believed there were several banshees and that one sat near the crossroads leading to the workhouse and foretold the deaths of the inmates.
Banshee - Lore or Reality?
Are banshees figments of the imagination based on folklore or a reality we don’t yet understand? With all of the historical discoveries and more discovered in contemporary times, the answer is maybe, some day this will be known. Perhaps, Shakespeare’s Hamlet’s statement about there being more things in the universe than philosophy can envision to Horatio is reality. There have been documented cases of portents.
Related articles:
The Hapsburg Dynasty’s Harbingers of Death
Spectral Hounds, Legends and a True Account
Source:
The Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits, Rosemary Ellen Guiley, (Facts on File, Inc., 1992)
