Saturday 10 June 2017

From a long article on 'Social Life in Cashel' in the Larne Times, 31st March 1928.

The Leprechaun and Banshee are peculiar to Irish death scenes. In the North the Banshee plays an important role, the Leprechaun belonging more to the South and West. It is fairly well believed in the manor of Cashel and neighbouring areas that this visitant raises her mournful cry before the members of certain families respond to the final summons. There are traditions of the Banshee calling at the deaths of the McCarthys, the O'Neills and a host of other people whose forebears have long been identified with the Emerald Isle.

Superstition we may term such a belief, but the extraordinary thing is that men and women of every religious denomination in the country are more or less affected by it. Once an elderly man told the writer that he distinctly heard the Banshee uttering her cries when a relative was about to depart. He kept the door partly open, and saw a figure outside making frantic gestures. This man was a member of the Presbyterian Church, and interested in revival experiences. So one could hardly put a story of that nature down entirely to superstitious influences. There must hav ebeen in some way or other a background of fact ghostly or realistic. Indeed, quite a number of other people, in Cashel, three or four decades ago, told of similar experiences.

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