Bridging Appalachia

#mabsdrawlloweenclub2023 – day 7 – Faerie – Bean Sí | Bean Caointe

“I heard the banshee when my grandmother died. She was heard on Rathlin too by the people, but I never heard her there. I’d be telling a lie if I did. We were saying the rosary when this cry started and when she stopped and ceased we could hear the long sigh. They said she was a wee woman all in white though I never seen her. We went up to my grandmother’s and they were on their knees at the rosary waiting for her to die. That’s quite true” (Antrim 2).

“But I remember clearly my late grandfather (whose name was James Cloney and who died on 23 July 1940, aged 84 years) tell us of seeing the banshee on a few occasions.
He saw her once sitting on the window-sill of Richard Barry’s house in Nemestown … She was combing her hair and every now and again she would utter a scream and end in a kind of caome. The time was around twelve o’clock and I remember the date – it was 16 February 1910 for he said the same Richard Barry died two days after he had seen her” (Wexford 19(a)).

Lysaght, Patricia. 1996. The Banshee: The Irish Supernatural Death-Messenger. Dublin: O’Brien.