The Banshee by O'Donnell Elliott

Author:O'Donnell, Elliott [O'Donnell, Elliott]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-03-29T16:00:00+00:00

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CHAPTER IX

THE BANSHEE AT SEA

Talking of phantom music, there is a widespread belief among Celtic races that whenever it is heard proceeding from the sea, either a death or some other great calamity is prognosticated. Such a belief is very prevalent along the coasts of Scotland, Wales, and Cornwall, and Mr Dyer, in his “Ghost World,” p. 413, refers to it in Ireland. “Sometimes,” he says, “music is heard at sea, and it is believed in Ireland that, when a friend or relative dies, a warning voice is discernible.” To what extent this music is connected with Banshee hauntings it is, of course, impossible to say; but I have known cases in which it has owed its origin to the Banshee and to the Banshee only.

During the Civil War in America, for example, a transport of Confederate soldiers was making for Charlestown one evening, when a young Irish officer, who was leaning over the bulwarks and gazing pensively into the sea, was astonished to hear the very sweetest sounds of music coming from, so it seemed to him, the very depths of the blue waters. Thinking he must be dreaming, he called a brother officer to his side and asked him if he could hear anything.

“Yes,” the latter responded, “music, and what is more, singing. It is a woman, and she is singing some very tender and plaintive air. How the deuce do you account for it?”

“I don’t know,” the young Irishman replied, “unless it is the Banshee, and it sounds very like the description of it that my mother used to give me. I only hope it does not predict the death of any one of my very near relatives.”

It did not do that, but oddly enough, and unknown to him at the time, a namesake of his, whom he subsequently discovered was a second cousin, stood not ten yards from him at the very moment he was listening to the music, and was killed in action in a sortie from Charlestown on the following day.

A story of a similar nature was told me in Oregon by an old Irish Federal soldier, who was in the temporary employ of an apple merchant at Medford, Jackson County. I don’t in any way vouch for its truth, but give it just as it was related to me.

“You ask me if I have ever come across any ghosts in America. Well, I guess I have, several, and amongst others the Banshee. Oh, yes, I am Irish, although I speak with the nasal twang of the regular Yank. Everyone does who has lived in the Eastern States for any length of time. It’s the climate. My name, however, is O’Hagan, and I was born in County Clare; and though my father was only a peasant, I’m a darned sight more Irish than half the people who possess titles and big estates in the old country to-day.

“I emigrated from Ireland with my parents, when I was only a few weeks old, and we settled in New York, where I was working as a porter on the quays when the Civil War broke out.

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