Irish Folk Tales

by Henry Glassie

  So in the long run he told her.

  So, she says, “There’s a plan to get rid of him.”

  “Well, what is it?” says the man. And he got terrible excited.

  “Well,” she says, “you told me there that you had a drum, that you notified him when you wanted anything.”

  “Aye, I have it,” he says.

  “Well,” says she, “take out the drum now, and give a roll on it, and when he comes, tell him that you want churches and chapels built. At once!”

  So he went out and gave a roll on the drum and the Devil came along.

  Your man says to him, “Well,” he says, “I want you to do a thing, but whether you’ll do it or not, I don’t know. Would you put up churches and chapels here and there through the country?”

  “Ah, I will, of course,” says the Devil.

  So anyway there was churches and chapels erected be night that the people couldn’t understand atall.

  So, when him and the Devil was parting, the Devil says to him, “Let that be the last thing now that ever you’ll ask me to do.”

  So he was in as bad fettle as ever when he came back to the wife.

  But the buildings went up.

  So, aw, he was getting that she didn’t know what was going to happen.

  Says she, “There’s one plan yet, that ye’ll get shut of him forever.”

  She says, “Get out the drum, and give a roll on it, a good loud one. When he comes, tell him that you want him to do the last thing that ever you’ll ask him to do.

  “And when he asks you what it is, tell him that you want him to make all lawyers honest men.”

  He out with the drum.

  And he gave a rattle.

  No time till the boyo appeared.

  “Well,” he says, “what do you want me to do the day? You told me the last time that we were talking that you’d never ask me to do more for you.”

  “Well,” he says, “this is going to be the last.”

  “Well, what is it?” says the Devil.

  “I want you,” he says, “for to make all lawyers honest men.”

  “Ah” says the Devil.

  “Give me that drum,” he says.

  “There’s women at the back of this. If I done what you want, there’s times that I wouldn’t have a coal on me hearth.”

  THE BANSHEE

  T. Crofton Croker, Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland, 1862

  NO MAN GOES BEYOND HIS DAY

  TOMÁS Ó CRITHIN KERRY

  ROBIN FLOWER 1945

  A fisherman must follow the sea, and how can a man escape the day of his death? There is such and such a time marked out for a man on this earth, and, when his day is come, if he went into an ant’s hole, death would find him there. We have only our time, and, young or old, a man must go when he is called.

  There was a boat going out to Inis Tuaisceart once to fish from the rocks, and when they were halfway out they found that they had left the mast behind them. So they went back for the mast.

  And there was a man on the slip who was the best man on the Island at fishing from the rocks, for at every craft there is one man is better than all others, if it were only at driving nails with a hammer. They set out again, taking this man with them, and, when they came to Inis Tuaisceart, they went about the island putting one man out on a rock here and another there, till at last they were all in their places fishing.

  After they had been thus for a time, the day began to rise on them, and the boat went again to pick up the men. But when they came to the rock where they had put this man out, he was not to be found.

  A wave had come up out of the sea, they said, and taken him, for death wanted him and his day was come, and when they went back at the beginning of the day it was not for the mast they went, as they thought, but for the man. No man goes beyond his day.

  A LIGHT TOKENS THE DEATH OF MR. CORRIGAN

  HUGH NOLAN FERMANAGH

  HENRY GLASSIE 1972

  Well, I was coming along the road convenient to Drumbargy Lane.

  And I seen this light.

  And it seemed for to start—I couldn’t just say whether it started from Francy’s or whether it come past it. But it was a little below Francy’s when I seen it first.

  And it was a powerful light and what struck me was that: wasn’t it a wonder that it wasn’t blacked out, do you see, for the way it was at that time it was only the underpart of a bicycle light that you’d see; the upper part of the glass had to be either blackened or there had to be a black cloth over it. It was during the war, do you see.

  But this was a full light.

  And it came on very, very, very, very quick.

  And it was just coming forward to where the turn is on the road when it disappeared.

  So I was on this side of Drumbargy Lane at that time. And the thought that struck me was that they either got a burst or a puncture or something had happened to the bicycle.

  So I came on anyway, expecting for to come across some man in difficulty, or some person, man or woman.

  But there was nobody on the road.

  So I took from that, that it was some kind of token.

  John O’Prey was working here with Francy’s father at the time.

  And he was coming home one night.

  And this light came along, as he thought, meeting him.

  But it went out before they met.

  And there was nobody on the road.

  I just don’t know how long it was before I seen it that John O’Prey seen it. But Francy’s father died about in a week or a fortnight, a short time after.

  A CLOCK TOKEN

  A CONNEMARA WOMAN GALWAY

  LADY GREGORY 1920

  One night the clock in my room struck six and it had not struck for years, and two nights after—on Christmas night—it struck six again, and afterwards I heard that my sister in America had died just at that hour. So now I have taken the weights off the clock, that I wouldn’t hear it again.

  THE BANSHEE CRIES FOR THE O’BRIENS

  MRS. O’BRIEN GALWAY

  LADY GREGORY 1920

  The Banshee always cries for the O’Briens. And Anthony O’Brien was a fine man when I married him, and handsome, and I could have had great marriages if I didn’t choose him, and many wondered at me.

  And when he was took ill and in the bed, Johnny Rafferty came in one day, and says he, “Is Anthony living?” and I said he was. “For,” says he, “as I was passing, I heard crying, crying, from the hill where the forths are, and I thought it must be for Anthony, and that he was gone.” And then Ellen, the little girl, came running in, and she says, “I heard the mournfullest crying that ever you heard just behind the house.”

  And I said, “It must be the Banshee.”

  And Anthony heard me say that where he was lying in the bed, and he called out, “If it’s the Banshee it’s for me, and I must die today or tomorrow.” And in the middle of the next day, he died.

  THE BANSHEE CRIES FOR THE BOYLES

  ARMAGH

  T. G. F. PATERSON 1945

  I saw the Banshee when old Boyle’s mother died. I was coming home in the dusk with a load of sods, and the old gray horse and me mother with me.

  And says she till me, “Some poor woman has lost her man or maybe a son.”

  And the thing wore a shroud as if had come from a coffin, and its hair was streaming in the wind. We both saw it.

  And me mother, she said a prayer or maybe two. “That’s the Banshee,” says she.

  Aye, it cried for many an old family here, and some say it’s one that has gone before. Be that as it may, no human heart could utter such grief, so, mind ye, I doubt it.

  EXPERIENCE OF THE BANSHEE

  JOSEPH AND PETER FLANAGAN FERMANAGH

  HENRY GLASSIE 1977

  JOSEPH I heard the Banshee twice.

  I might have heard it three times.

  PETER Well, tell us one experience of it anyway.

  JOSEPH Well, I was co
ming down one night. It was at one o’clock in the night.

  And the house was over about John Carson’s. It would be about a quarter of a mile from where I was.

  And there the crying started.

  I stood.

  And there it went on.

  It would cease for a minute. Then it’d start again.

  So I began to think then that it must have been the Banshee.

  Then I had a long bit to go home. And a lonesome journey. I had to go up a place they call the Church Avenue and by a graveyard.

  So then, they say when the Banshee cries that it’s always some person belonging to the family dead or dying or going to die.

  So in a day or two after, we heared there was one of them dying. It was way up in Cork. He wasn’t living here, but he was one of the family; he lived up in Cork.

  PETER Aye, I heard it once too.

  It started in a house just down below Carson’s.

  And I came on up there, and I came just to that hill. And I was out there just on the head of that brae. You know it. First brae as you turn the road.

  It started to cry. And the cries of it! And the river is very near there, it comes very close to the road.

  And the crying was most terrific.

  And it cried and it cried, as I thought along the river.

  And then I had to turn up at the end of Stony Road, turn up toward Swanlinbar, across from old Drumane Bridge.

  And says I to meself, says I, “It’ll get out. What’ll I do?” Says I, “I’ll be in an awful state. I’ll have to turn back and go back.”

  So I came as far as Drumane Bridge, and it seemed to be a bit in on the field, about a hundred or two hundred yards from me.

  I went on up the road, and when I was passing by that house just above Drumane Bridge, John Rooney’s (he’s dead now since you were here), the rooster slapped his wings. That’s a sign that there’s something very near, some evil thing near you when the rooster does that way. That was supposed in this country, you know.

  And he started to crow and crow,

  and crow and crow,

  till I was frightened,

  the life was frightened out of me.

  And the Banshee came on.

  He still kept nearer and nearer.

  He drew nearer.

  He was just right beside the road.

  And with that, the next flash he gave, he took a cut, and he landed away about two or three hundred yards from me. With the result, he went away back from me. “Well, God bless us,” says I, “what’ll I do if he comes out? And he’ll cross me path.” I had to turn right, and he was on the left-hand side. Says I, “What’ll I do,” says I, “if he happens to get in front of me?”

  And I had a long journey to go then.

  But, lucky enough, when I turned right, the cry started to fade out. There was a pretty rough wind, and with the rattle of the bushes and all, it just died out just as it started.

  And the next day there was a person died just right beside it.

  Well, it sounded really just like a young child there crying, middling strong, we’ll say two year old. You often heard a two-year-old child there with a middling good strong rough cry, like that. And to die out like the same as you heard a thing there of a windy night or a windy day, and it would just fade away, the same as a car just revving up and dying out like that. It went like that.

  And it died out and I got more content as it died out and passed away.

  I got home and that was that. But this person died, and that made me believe surely that it was really the Banshee.

  It cried from that wee house there, you know Andy Boyle’s. It cried on out that stretch of road, and then when I turned for Swanlinbar, it cried up along the road and landed up at Derryhowlaght Hill.

  You know where Derryhowlaght is: that first hill as you cross Drumane Bridge. It cried that length.

  Well, if it was another—if it was cats, you know, I’d know a cat there. You know cats yourself. A cat’s cry is quite different.

  This was really a Banshee.

  That was the only time ever I heard that I could just certify that it was a Banshee. But I heard a person saying—a very sensible woman; she was Hewitt; she was from Belturbet, and she was married to a man the name of Crawford in Kinawley—and she said the Banshee cried for her—I’m not really sure, but it was some of her parents anyway. And she said it came onto the windowsill.

  And it sat on the windowsill.

  And it cried the whole night.

  And she was a very very nice woman, a very quiet person. And she told me the Banshee cried and cried. Well, she said it appeared very very much like an old woman of ninety or a hundred years; it was just faded out, you know, past recognition.

  The Banshee was of that type. Well, in her explanation, or what it appeared to her.

  JOSEPH There was one man telling me:

  Them all kneeled down to say their prayers one night by the fire. And there was a back door. And they were about in the middle of the prayer. The crying started outside the back door.

  There was a cry outside the back door.

  Ah, they went up and looked, and wondered terribly at it. But they knew what it was.

  It went on, cried on.

  They kneeled down and finished their prayers. They were in this house belonging to another man. So the boss came down the next day, and this man was telling him about this, about the cry outside the door, the cry that riz when they were kneeling saying their prayers.

  “Well,” he says, “no matter where they are in this world, there’s some of the Keenans dead,” he says.

  So in a few days after they got word out of America: there was one of them had died and was buried.

  Now wasn’t that the Banshee?

  GRANDFATHER’S GHOST

  JAMES SMALL DOWN

  RONALD H. BUCHANAN 1956

  I can remember me sister and meself sitting on two creepies in front of the open fire; there was a hen with a flock of birds in the hole at the side of the brace. There was nobody in the house but our two selves. Ye know where the room door was yonder on the left-hand side? Well I looks up and there was a man standing at it with a long-tartled coat and a beard and a hard hat on him. He was a big man, just the full of the door; and he was a sort of bent over, standing leaning on two sticks. He looked at the pair of us, and turned on his heel and walked into the room again.

  Well, me mother was out in the yard, and I called her and she came running in and we told her what we’d seen. And she went and got me aunt and they both went down the room together, but they could see nothing. When me father came home that night he tacked me with what I seen, so I told him what the old man looked like, and he just shook his head. “It was your grandfather,” says he. And mind ye, he was dead afore I was born.

  TERRIBLE GHOSTS

  PETER FLANAGAN FERMANAGH

  HENRY GLASSIE 1972

  This man, he started work one morning. And when bedtime came, he was showed his room.

  He went into the room, lovely bed, very comfortable-looking.

  The room was all furnished. It was one thing that he just remarked very much: that a bedroom was furnished so highly.

  He knelt down and he said his prayers, and he got into bed.

  And, of course, owing to it being a strange room, he didn’t sleep so quick after he got into bed, you know, as anyone will do. Well, it would apply to me for one, anyway, that went into a strange room, into a strange bed, I wouldn’t sleep for maybe half the night, till I’d get overpowered with sleep and I suppose then I’d sleep.

  But anyway, he found the furniture a-moving, a-moving all through the room.

  The rest of the occupants of the house was all fast asleep. And this went on. You’d think that the room was going to come down on top of him.

  And on top of that: the weight went in on top of him into the bed.

  And there he was in an awful condition; he thought there was tons and tons of weight on top of him.


  And he was trembling.

  And he started to sweat.

  And he got into that great a temperature that the sweat boiled out through the clothes.

  And out of that, he just went away in a swoon and remained that way till daylight in the morning.

  He woke up the same as if he was in a fever. He wasn’t hardly fit to leave the bed.

  He managed to get out of the bed, and get up and put on his clothes. Came down to the kitchen. Went out to his work.

  So, there was another man hired, engaged in it. And says the man to him, he says, “Jimmy,” he says, “how did you get on last night, how did you sleep?”

  “Oh,” he says, “I got on very badly,” he says. “I put in a terrible night.” Says, “I was nearly killed.”

  He says, “I am very, very lucky to be alive.” He says, “There must be a terrible ghost in that room.”

  “Ah,” says the fellow to him, “you’re only joking.” He says, “What happened?”

  So he explained to him what I’m after explaining to you, what really did happen.

  “Ah,” he says, “you only imagined it.”

  He says, “I did not,” he says, “I’m going to put in the day and look for me clothes and get away.”

  So, when they had the farmyard work done, they went out to the field to start to work, and he still kept at the fellow all the time—he was an old employee in the business—still asked him, “Is there a ghost in that room?”

  He’d say, “Is there a ghost, now tell me the truth, for it doesn’t make a bit difference to me?” he says. “Ghost or no ghost, I’m not going to put another night in it,” he says. “I put in a shocking night. I never thought that I’d have to undergo such a punishment,” he says, “as I underwent last night.”

  “Aw,” says the fellow to him finally, “there is a ghost all right,” he says, “and they shouldn’t have done it. There’s a ghost stationed in that room, stationed,” he says, “for all time in it. And I wonder,” he says, “that they put you into it.”