They waited for the daylight, and himself and Jack struck for Broadford with the documents. He found where he left his bike, and he got off and he stood up on the pier of a gate. He could see the whole country down to the shores of Lough Derg, and back across Keeper Hill, Silvermines, County Tipperary, up along nearly to the borders o’ Galway. There was no type of a house. Nothing there, only the green fields.
Gallagher told that for a fact. And he’s only dead a few years.
Stories of visits to fairy mansions are by no means uncommon in Irish lore. Cynics will say, of course, that they stem from dreams, drunkenness, or ragged peasants peeping longingly through the windows of landlords’ great houses at the sumptuousness within and imagining impossibilities thereafter. Such peeping was probably done, but stories of fairy mansions did not originate there. Over a thousand years before the landlords were even heard of, “Bruíon Chaorthainn” (“The Fairy Palace of the Quicken Trees”) provides us with something similar—a house that looks welcoming, but—! And that is the basic formula right up to our own time, no matter how the building itself may have changed—wood, stone, iron, or whatever. The main problem is: Once in, how does one get out? That part of the plot has changed remarkably little. Why? Probably because people themselves haven’t, whatever their surroundings.
“An ol’ man used to tell me when I was young—there’s a fort not far from here, an’ he said if you were passing it in the night a man’s voice would say, ‘fan liom’ (‘stay with me’). Whether he believed it or not, one thing I can tell you about him, after dark he wouldn’t go near that fort. He said he heard it himself, an’ he named several people for me that heard it, the voice saying ‘fan liom.’”
BAREFIELD, APRIL 18, 1982
Meeting the Cóiste Bodhar, the Fairies’ Hearse
I MET the cóiste bodhar myself. I was coming back home from a dance at two o’clock or half past two, maybe three. They used always say the cóiste bodhar was the fairies’ carriage, their hearse, that they were going burying their dead someplace.
That cóiste bodhar was about a mile high; the rattle of it was about a mile high. And it took nearly a quarter of an hour for it to pass me.
I wasn’t one bit afraid. I was cycling, and I thought ’twas a lorry coming around the turn o’ the road. I was expecting there was a fellow in the lorry that’d know me, and I didn’t want him to know I was on that road at all. So, I pulled the bicycle into the side of the road and I sat on it with my back turned from the lorry, as I thought. But, you see, I suppose ’twas all for luck. I didn’t realize ’twas the cóiste bodhar. Still, I felt the thing passing me, all but touching me. That was why I couldn’t look back to see who was in it.
Oh, ’twas my luck. If I realized that that was the cóiste bodhar, I might never have come home. The danger’d be that, sure, you might give way. An old man that used play cards with us, sixty years before that he met it in the same spot, the cóiste bodhar. In the very same spot.
The cóiste bodhar, or the headless coach, is an unearthly vehicle much feared by night travelers—pedestrian and otherwise. Accounts of where it comes from and what its function is vary—devil’s coach, transport for the banshee, omen of death, etc.—but the teller of this story is quite sure. It is the fairies’ hearse. And, as always, when they are on the move, normality takes second place. Note the perception of its size, for example—as if a train were passing, but an impossibly high one.
His turning away from it may have been a more instinctive than rational decision than even he realized, in fact. For most Irish people of his generation (over age sixty-five) knew that to see the cóiste bodhar would be a calamity amounting to a death sentence. And he knows that despite any terror he might feel (though he says he doesn’t), he must hold his nerve and his ground. Only thus can he remain safe.
Here, we see again (as we did in the account of the Latoon sceach), the Irish fairies as being subject to death.
“They’ll tell you that the banshee isn’t there. Bull! She’s there!
(A local man) saw her. A big tall veil . . . a white veil,
in the shape of a woman. An’ a big long head o’ gray hair.
An’ every time she roared, she threw back the head.
That was his description of her.”
DRUMLINE, OCTOBER 19, 2000
A Personal Experience of the Banshee
THERE WAS A MAN lived near me, he was a gentleman farmer. He wasn’t one o’ the landlords, as such. At the time he arrived on the scene, the old landlords had died out, but his place at one time was landlord property.
This old lad wouldn’t like to see too many people shooting in his place. He was great to preserve wildlife, but when nobody would bother him to go into the place, the place filled up with rabbits. You see, rabbits are terrible to populate. Where you’ll have two rabbits at the start of a year, you’ll have five hundred rabbits at the end o’ the year. They’re a terror to populate.
So he discovered he had too many rabbits. And I met him on the road one day. He had a grand sidecar trap, big high wheels and a racy horse inside under it, and a big whip. And he’d be sitting back and the horse’d be flying into Limerick—a blood horse, man. He pulled up, anyway.
“Just the man I wanted to see,” he said.
I said, “Yeah?”
“I’m going to town,” he said. “If you agree to do something for me, I’ll do something else for you.”
I said, “Right. I will, o’ course, if ’tis possible.”
“I’ll tell you my problem,” he said. “My estate is infested with rabbits. I’ll go into Newsom’s now when I go into Limerick and if you agree to trap the rabbits for me, I’ll bring you the ways and means.”
I said, “Yeah. I’ll do that.” Little he knew that I was doing it on the quiet, anyway! But I had a quieter way o’ working than a rabbit trap. I’d snare ’em. Wire.
I said, “Okay, I’ll do the trick for you.”
So off he went. He was delighted. He arrived back in the evening and he brought three or four dozen traps. So, I got some tape and I taped the traps, the jaws o’ the traps, so the rabbits wouldn’t be screeching. And the following day I collected the traps, got my brother, and we went to the far end o’ the farm—there was over five hundred acres in it, a mighty estate!
I told him, “I’ll be around the house probably in the night. So, if you hear any sounds you can know that I’m going in and out,”—because, you know, you could get yourself shot. He wouldn’t bat an eyelid to blow the brains out o’ you. He was a target for robbery, so you couldn’t blame him for defending himself. And he wouldn’t miss you, either!
We went off to the far end, so he wouldn’t hear the rabbits getting caught, you see. If he thought there was any cruelty or anything like that, he could get sorry and tell us, “Out!”
So, we did our business out from the house first. We’d go in the night at about nine or ten o’clock, and we’d pick all the rabbits out o’ the traps and snares, and we’d collect again at about two o’clock, and again in the morning.
Rabbits were a half-crown a pair, a brace, and that was a lot o’ money, you know, where there was a thousand rabbits and money so scarce.
We had two good bikes, man, and we’d hit for Limerick. As a matter o’ fact, a man with a car out o’ Limerick came to us for the rabbits. Oh, ’twas well worth his while. They used to export ’em.
After about a week, anyway, we showed up near the house. And there was an orchard, and a big wall, and we took shelter at the back o’ the wall. The first night we were there ’twas very lonesome! But I had told him in the day that we’d be in the vicinity and he said, “Okay. That’s okay. I’ll know you’re there.”
I assured him that I wouldn’t wake him up or cause him any undue bother. “That’s okay,” he said, delighted. Asked me how I was getting on.
“Getting on good,” I said.
He was thanking me, man. Normally ’twas the other thing you’d get, a shower o’ lead!
We were around there for most of a week, and this night, ’twould be about two o’clock in the morning, we were contemplating going home. There’d be nothing happening after that. We were tired out, sure. By God, I thought I heard crying away down in the estate. And before we moved to come home, maybe ten minutes, the crying came nearer, louder. That’s how we knew ’twas nearer. It got louder. More distinct. And we decided that we wouldn’t move until . . . well, things settled down. So we stayed put. And faith, the crying passed within—ah, I’d say thirty or forty yards of us.
’Twas very loud and clear at that stage. There was two of us in it, and we were two young men, good hardy lads; it didn’t frighten us that much. We waited until it had moved on and came away. We came home. And ’twas when we came home and put on the light—o’ course ’twas only the light of a lamp; there was no electricity at that time—that’s the time we got frightened.
We went away to bed, anyway, and forgot it. But we never forgot it, really. We thought we did, but ’twas pure fatigue. We slept, and delivered our catch for the night to the car man the following day. He arranged that he’d come again for more, and we said, “Yeah. There’ll be more.”
In order to meet our commitments, we had to go down again the following night, earlier in the night, around midnight.
I learned since that the banshee scarcely operates after midnight. ’Tis up to twelve o’clock, or one o’clock. And she can’t cross a stream.
You know the big stream that runs down through most estates, a big watercourse, with pebbles inside in it, a drainage system? It ran down at the back o’ this house, and, faith, she didn’t cross it. She came directly down in line with the stream, parallel. By God, she came closer. ’Twas a female voice. But it had a funny intonation. It wasn’t continuous at all. It went in spasms, very sweet, as if the head was being thrown back. It came out in volumes like that.
So we steadied ourselves. We weren’t as frightened the second night as we were the first night. And she came via the front door, the hall door. Without a doubt in the world, it came past that hall door.
By God, we didn’t go home that night; ’twas too early. We held on. And the banshee continued on her journey, out the main gate of the estate.
We weren’t that brave, either, now, I might just as well tell you. ’Twasn’t through bravado at all we stayed, but there was a few pound at stake! We had a discussion, anyway, myself and my brother, about this banshee thing, and the conclusion we came to was that . . . the man was going to die.
I had a chat with him during the following day, and he didn’t show any signs o’ going to pass away. Nor he didn’t. But about four or five days elapsed, and he arrived out to us all spruced up, and he said he was going to his brother’s funeral, that he had died.
I said nothing about what we heard at that time, but I was intending to ask him, to know had they anything like that in the family, when one of ’em’d be going to die, or when one of ’em’d get sick.
I got my chance a few weeks after. He thought to himself for a long time.
“Why did you pose me the question?” he said.
“Well, I’ll tell you the truth, now,” I said, “why I’m posing you the question. When I was trapping the rabbits, I heard something, what I reckoned was the banshee.”
“Yes,” he said. “Yeah. That was before my brother died. The banshee follows our family,” he said.
Though regarded by most academic experts as not one of the fairies, despite her name, which suggests that she is, I have decided to include the banshee in this collection for the following reasons: She very clearly belongs to the otherworldly—though solitary and with a very specific function, i.e., to warn of impending death; she displays some of the traits of the Good People, such as an inability, or at least reluctance, to cross running water; and, most importantly, some of my informants were very definite in regarding her as one of them. Though nearly all, it has to be said, were surprised to be even asked who she is or where she comes from. Most, when pressed, would only venture that she is from “the Other Side, somewhere.”
The men who hear her on the night in question do so without any inkling at first that a death is to follow. They are too busy trying to make a living during hard times. But as the very precise description of events shows, they quickly come to realize that the crying they have heard is something out of the ordinary. And the next night’s events confirm this. But the fact that no one dies, though they recognize that it must be the banshee they have heard, mystifies them. It need not have, for when they discover, a few days later, that a family death has occurred some distance away it merely confirms what they and most Irish people know: that when the banshee “follows” (cries for) a family, her warning wail is heard not necessarily just at the place of death, but in the home, the ancestral property, also.
Two interesting points in this episode are that the voice seems to be disembodied (yet strong)—most accounts have her being only heard, though there are instances of her having been seen—and that she seems to be most at home during the small hours, though not all of those I questioned agreed with this, as we will shortly see.
“There were certain people that believed that the banshee used to follow their family, an’ they weren’t afraid of her at all. They liked to hear her.”
BAREFIELD, APRIL 18, 1982
Banshee Comes for Dying Man
A FRIEND O’ MINE, an uncle o’ his was dying. At that time they’d be kept at home till they’d die. ’Twas very seldom people were put into hospital. And the better-off families’d have a nurse minding ’em. So, this family had a nurse for this old man, but they used to take turns over a couple o’ weeks to stay up with him; they weren’t expecting him to last too long. Every day they could see him going down.
My friend knew, from what experience he had, that the old man wouldn’t last the night. They came home sometime that morning after being up all the night, and they were to go back again that evening. ’Twas a pony and trap they had, himself and his sister, and they hit away over about nine o’clock—a noble summer’s evening. And just as he was coming out his own gate, he met an old man who had worked with the other family all his life. He came over to him and asked, “How’s the old fellow?”
“Ah,” says he, “we’re not expecting him to put in the night.”
So, they were talking away and the old man asked him, “Are you stopping beyond for the night?”
“Ah, we are,” says he. “We’re taking our turns looking after him.”
“Well,” he says, “if he’s going to die tonight, don’t be surprised at anything that happens over there.”
This friend o’ mine was a young man at the time and he paid no great heed.
He went over, and the old man was dying. The nurse and the family were above with him, saying the rosary. He stayed below in the kitchen with one o’ the workmen, a man that was there all his life.
And he told me that he saw the latch on the back door lifting. The door opened. He sat up, and he was expecting someone to walk in out o’ the yard. No one came in. So he went up and he closed it. The workman said nothing.
He told me the crying started outside around the yard, the very same as a woman crying. And the latch lifted, and it opened again. He looked at the workman, and the workman looked at him. So he went up and he closed it again. And it opened the third time.
And the workman said, “Leave it open. Don’t close that door again.”
The two of ’em sat down. The crying went off up the hill, and faded away. The door remained open, and the next thing, one o’ the family came down and said, “Poor man is dead.”
My friend got up—he told me this, now, himself. He walked out around the yard. He said ’twas the grandest night you were ever out. There wasn’t a breath of air. Nothing.
But whatever that old workman knew, he said to leave it open. Whether it had to be left open to let him pass through or not, I don’t know.
It is obvious in this story, though we are
not told it directly, that the banshee cries for the family of the old man who is dying. The two aged workmen, who have been there all their working lives, know that something odd is about to happen to accompany the old man’s passing. Just how odd, the nephew finds out in due course—the door opening three times, the woman’s voice crying in the yard, the warning to him not to close the door a third time.
The man who told me the tale is probably correct when he surmises that the two events—the door being open and the old man’s spirit passing through—are connected. Equally connected to those is the banshee’s crying, leading his spirit into the Other World.
“She’s the fairy woman, an’ her business was warning you of an oncoming disaster, a death in the family usually.”
DRUMLINE, OCTOBER 19, 2000
Banshee Alerts Family
THIS STORY about the banshee being only for the O’s and the Mac’s18 is not right. Not right. Because the Frosts had a banshee, and other families I know that came in with Cromwell, too. Do you know that the Frosts came into Ireland in front of the Cromwellian army, playing music? They were drummers. There was an old lady up the road there, and anytime the Frosts would annoy her, she’d read their pedigree and she’d say, “Sure you only came here with Oliver Cromwell. You were only drummers.”
I knew another one o’ those families, and the memory o’ what happened with the banshee’ll never leave my mind. The son o’ the family, he was living over on the mountain and he was a very quiet fellow. He had a number o’ sisters—I knew ’em—as nice girls as you’d meet anywhere. And when his father died, he was on his own. He had no one to give him a hand to do anything. It was an isolated kind of a place, and his sisters were married in the locality. He was a nice kind of a person, but a man that kept to himself, a very tasty, tidy farmer. Had his own horse and his own ancient machinery. And he cut the hay as they did fifty years before that.
Meeting the Other Crowd Page 16