The characters of Irish beliefs and legends, dating back to the ancient Celtic culture, are unique and have no analogues among other peoples. Among them - the banshee - the patron spirit of the Irish family. From time to time, in the stillness of the night, an ominous howl is heard over the fields and hills of the green country, striking the hearts of those who heard it with mortal horror. This banshee announces the imminent death of one of the residents of the area.
Women of the mysterious people of the Magic Hills
Banshee is a unique, mysterious and ambiguous creature in its manifestations. There is no consensus about what it is. But everyone agrees that the banshee is definitely female. Her family name itself testifies to this. Banshee - from Irish bean sidhe - "woman of the sidhas."
Legends tell that in time immemorial, when the earth was very young and there were no borders between the worlds of people and gods, the mighty tribe of the goddess Danu lived in the green spaces of Ireland. This people - Tuatha De Danann - were skilled in crafts and sciences, worked great wonders, wielding the magic of the Druids. But one day the Sons of Mile, the ancestors of the present Irish, arrived from across the sea and defeated the people of Dana.
Some of the defeated were forced to sail across the Western Sea to the Other World, which is also called the Plain of Happiness, the Land of Eternal Youth or Apple Island. Others remained in Ireland, hiding in the depths of the Magic Hills, protected from human eyes by the spell of invisibility. They began to be called sidhis - the people of the Hills.
The relationship between winners and losers has always remained rather hostile and tense. And yet some banshees became so close to the new masters of the green land that they became patron spirits of the Irish clans and individual families, but not all, but those in whom pure Celtic blood flows, without an admixture of Saxon, Norman, Danish … These surnames, like usually begin with "O" or "Mac". Unlike the Slavic bereginas, banshees do not get close to people, they prefer to stay somewhat aloof from them.
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Basically, their "duties" include warning about impending danger, imminent death of one of the family members. But if the head of the family, to which the banshee is especially attached, leaves the borders of Ireland, it does not matter whether alone or with household members, leaving, say, to America or Australia, she follows him.
Such friendly banshees are most often seen in the guise of a young girl or young woman with red, flowing hair, which she combes with a silver comb. But there are brunettes and even blondes banshees. They are usually dressed in white, free-flowing clothes, less often they wear gray, black or green dresses. A banshee may appear to a traveler in the form of a short, neat gray-haired old woman. And if he wants, it will seem like a gray crow, a cloud, a bush, a shadow …
But some banshees remained hostile to the human race. They appear to people in the form of terrible vampire witches with red eyes, or ugly decrepit old women with matted hair and in rags. Such banshees live in the desert countryside, and at night they go hunting, catching belated travelers and drinking the blood of boys and young men. And a woman caught in the claws of a banshee from her bite will turn into the same monster. These evil creatures hate all living things. They kill everyone in the area without mercy, devastating any area where they live.
Fatal meetings in legends …
In Ireland, there are many legends about meetings with banshees. Usually they do not bode well for a person.
A young farmer was returning late at night from a nearby village to play cards. As he approached his farm, he saw a young woman, sitting on a roadside stone, combing her luxurious red hair with a silver comb. The guy tried to talk to her, but the beauty, as if not hearing, continued her occupation. Then he, out of mischief (the intoxication fogged his head), snatched the comb out of the woman's hands, ran home and went to bed.
The farmer was awakened by a terrible howl, from which the blood froze in his veins. This banshee came under the window and demanded the return of the stolen item. The guy did not dare to take the comb in his hands, grabbed it with the fireplace tongs and, opening the window, stuck them out. Lightning flashed, the house was shaken by a terrible roar of thunder, inhuman force tore the tongs out of their hands. In the morning, the farmer found a twisted, charred iron under the window. And I realized that if I had not guessed to take the comb with forceps, I would have remained without a hand.
Another legend tells how the same farmer, having met a young banshee, was inflamed with passion for her and tried to hug her. The banshee pushed the farmer so hard in the chest that he collapsed to the ground unconscious. And on the chest there was forever an imprint of a crimson hand.
Often a banshee appears as a laundress washing the bloody shirt of a man doomed to death in a stream. One man, seeing such a picture, asked the washerwoman to wash his shirt as well. She objected that his term had not yet arrived. But the man continued to insist. Then the banshee got angry, waved her hand - and pestered suddenly turned out to be without a shirt, which in an incomprehensible way turned out to be at the magic washerwoman. She washed it in the stream - and the shirt was again on the guy's body. Only the collar squeezed his neck so that it was impossible to breathe. Gasping for breath, he began to beg the banshee for forgiveness. Having tortured him to the best, she nevertheless took pity and let the man go in peace.
… and in reality
"Fairy tales!" - you say. But what about the many cases when real people saw a banshee or heard her cry-cry?
In the memoirs of Lady Fenshave, who lived in the years 1625-1676, there is a story about a meeting with a banshee. This happened when Lady Fenshave was visiting Lady Aunor O'Brien.
“We had to stay there for three nights. On the first night, about an hour, a voice woke me up. I drew back the curtain and in the moonlight I saw a woman leaning against the window in white, with red hair and deathly pale skin. She was speaking loudly with intonations that I had never heard before. And then, with a sigh that sounded more like wind than breath, she disappeared … I was so scared that the hairs on my head stood on end and my nightgown fell off my shoulders. I pushed and pinched my father, but he never woke up during this incident, which I witnessed. At about five o'clock the hostess came to see us and said that she did not go to bed all night because her cousin O'Brien, whose ancestors were the owners of this castle, asked her to stay in his chambers, and that he died at about two in the morning.
In 1979, one night, Irene McCormick from Andover (Hampshire, England), while in a bedroom on the second floor of her house, suddenly heard "the most terrible, howling sound." And right there downstairs, in the living room, a frightened dog whined. The woman took the dog upstairs, and together they waited for dawn. And in the morning, a notice came for Miss McCormick with a request to come to Winchester Hospital, where her mother lay dying. When Irene reached the hospital, her mother was already in a coma and soon died.
Boston businessman James O'Burry, descended from an ancient Irish family who emigrated to Massachusetts in 1848, heard the banshee cry several times. This happened for the first time in early childhood. He first heard the voice of a banshee when he was still a little boy.
“One morning I was lying in bed and heard a strange sound - like the sobs of a mad woman,” James recalled. - It was spring, blue sky, birds chirped outside the window. When I got up and went down to breakfast, my father was sitting at the kitchen table with tears in his eyes. I had never seen him cry before. My mother told me that they had just learned that my grandfather had died in New York. His death was a complete surprise.
In 1946, O'Barry served as an officer at the US Air Force headquarters in the Far East. At 6 o'clock in the morning, he was awakened by a low howling sound.
“This time I knew instantly what it was,” James said. - I sat up in bed, my hair stood on end. The sound grew louder and louder, increasing and decreasing like an air raid siren. Then he froze, and I felt terrible depression, because I realized that my father had died. A few days later I received confirmation.
On November 22, 1963, O'Barry heard the banshee's voice again. This happened in Toronto.
“I was lying in bed and reading the morning newspaper when a terrible howl filled my ears,” the businessman testified. - I immediately remembered my wife, little son, two of my brothers and thought that it was not one of them!
But this time the banshee was not mourning the death of any of his family members, but the death of a good friend of O'Barry, President John F. Kennedy.
An interesting experiment was carried out in the early 1990s by the Irish radio engineer O'Neill. He himself heard the banshee cry when his younger sister died. After that, O'Neill connected an ordinary medical phonendoscope with a sensitive microphone, and the device was always at hand. And when, many years later, O'Neill's mother was dying of cancer in the hospital, he heard this crying again, inserted pipes into his ears and recorded the sounds on a tape recorder. In his article, O'Neill honestly mentions that he took advantage of the discovery of the Permian doctor Gennady Krokhalev, who not only photographed the visions of patients, but also listened to their acoustic hallucinations using the same phonendoscope.
As they say, you can't argue against science. Inevitably, you will remember the words of the great English playwright: "There is much in the world, friend Horatio, that our wise men never dreamed of."
Victor MEDNIKOV