Sunday 4 June 2017

Variations in banshee appearance - animals

[...] The author tells many eerie stories of the banshee, among others that of an old family, the O'Gradys, a branch of which settled in Canada. Nevertheless, even in that distant land, the "banshee" followed them. One night a fearful, agonising wail was heard which could not be accounted for, and the next day the father and a son were drowned in the lake. Lady Wilde does say that this warning is not always conveyed in the same manner. Certain families see a white dove, others a white horse, where neither dove nor horse can be. In short, these supernatural sounds and appearances are attested with such evident good faith by many Irish men and women of culture, that impartial outsiders cannot but believe with the author, that "much remains unsolved; even to the philosopher of the mystic relations between the material and spiritual world." [...]

From a review of Lady Wilde's "Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms, and Superstitions of Ireland."
in  the Morning Post, 29th December 1886.

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