Unlike at the play in Galway, Unspoken Love, where there was not a single dry eye, at todays screening of Brenda Ní Shuailleabháin’s documentaries I may have been the only one crying in the group. Brenda Ní Shuailleabháin is the director and producer of Bibeanna, Bibeanna Mheiricea, Fearaibh Fionntrá three TG4 series we got to view today. After our exclusive screening we went over to her house in Ventry where we enjoyed delicious food with her, the Bibeanna, and men of Ventry from her programs. We heard wonderful stories, music, and advice from these insightful people. One of the programs highlighted the superstitions and scary stories the Bibeanna grew up with, being Japanese and from Hawaiʻi these are two things I am very familiar with.
Of all Irish ghosts, fairies, or bogies, the Banshee is the best known. She is a spirit with a long backstory, that no is certain about except that it is a mysterious past. The most famous Banshee of ancient times was attached to king Aibhill O'Brien, who haunted the rock of Craglea above Killaloe, near the old palace of Kincora. In A.D. 1014 the battle of Clontarf, (remember from my previous blog about Parnell Square) the old king, Brian Boru, knew that he would never come away alive because the previous night, Aibhill appeared and told him of his impending fate.
The Banshee's method of foretelling death was differed in olden times compared to the present. In old Irish tales, before a battle, she would be found washing human heads and limbs, or bloodstained clothes, till the water is dyed with human blood. Now she usually wails and wrings her hands. So it seems her attributes and characteristics have changed just a little bit.
Descriptions of her appearance vary from story to story. Sometimes she is young and beautiful; sometimes she is old scary looking. One writer describes her as "a tall, thin woman with uncovered head, and long hair that floated round her shoulders, attired in something which seemed either a loose white cloak, or a sheet thrown hastily around her, uttering piercing cries." Another person saw her one evening sitting on a stile in the yard and described her as “a very small woman, with blue eyes, long light hair, and wearing a red cloak.”
One of the oldest and best-known Banshee stories is of the Memoirs of Lady Fanshaw. In 1642 her and her husband, Sir Richard, went to visit a friend in his ancient baronial castle surrounded by a moat. At midnight she was awakened by a shrill and supernatural scream. Looking out of bed, in the moonlight, a female face and part of a body was hovering at her window. The height of her window and the moat below makes it impossible to be something of this world. The face was of a young and handsome woman, pale, with long and wild red hair. Dressed in an ancient Irish dress. She stayed there hovering at the window looking straight at Lady Fanshaw and then vanished with two more ghastly shrieks. In the morning, in sheer terror, she told her host what she saw and to her surprise, he wasn’t surprised. He just answered with "A near relation of my family, expired last night in this castle. We disguised our certain expectation of the event from you, lest it should throw a cloud over the cheerful reception which was your due. Now, before such an event happens in this family or castle, the female specter whom you have seen is always visible. She is believed to be the spirit of a woman of inferior rank, whom one of my ancestors degraded himself by marrying, and whom afterwards, to expiate the dishonor done to his family, he caused to be drowned in the moat." So pretty much she forever haunts the family of her murderer as revenge for her death by visiting them every time one of theirs dies.
If you don’t already have chicken skin, Banshee isn’t exclusive to families of Irish descent. The last incidence of her appearance was a visit to a family English by name and origin. So, good luck.
Of all Irish ghosts, fairies, or bogies, the Banshee is the best known. She is a spirit with a long backstory, that no is certain about except that it is a mysterious past. The most famous Banshee of ancient times was attached to king Aibhill O'Brien, who haunted the rock of Craglea above Killaloe, near the old palace of Kincora. In A.D. 1014 the battle of Clontarf, (remember from my previous blog about Parnell Square) the old king, Brian Boru, knew that he would never come away alive because the previous night, Aibhill appeared and told him of his impending fate.
The Banshee's method of foretelling death was differed in olden times compared to the present. In old Irish tales, before a battle, she would be found washing human heads and limbs, or bloodstained clothes, till the water is dyed with human blood. Now she usually wails and wrings her hands. So it seems her attributes and characteristics have changed just a little bit.
Descriptions of her appearance vary from story to story. Sometimes she is young and beautiful; sometimes she is old scary looking. One writer describes her as "a tall, thin woman with uncovered head, and long hair that floated round her shoulders, attired in something which seemed either a loose white cloak, or a sheet thrown hastily around her, uttering piercing cries." Another person saw her one evening sitting on a stile in the yard and described her as “a very small woman, with blue eyes, long light hair, and wearing a red cloak.”
One of the oldest and best-known Banshee stories is of the Memoirs of Lady Fanshaw. In 1642 her and her husband, Sir Richard, went to visit a friend in his ancient baronial castle surrounded by a moat. At midnight she was awakened by a shrill and supernatural scream. Looking out of bed, in the moonlight, a female face and part of a body was hovering at her window. The height of her window and the moat below makes it impossible to be something of this world. The face was of a young and handsome woman, pale, with long and wild red hair. Dressed in an ancient Irish dress. She stayed there hovering at the window looking straight at Lady Fanshaw and then vanished with two more ghastly shrieks. In the morning, in sheer terror, she told her host what she saw and to her surprise, he wasn’t surprised. He just answered with "A near relation of my family, expired last night in this castle. We disguised our certain expectation of the event from you, lest it should throw a cloud over the cheerful reception which was your due. Now, before such an event happens in this family or castle, the female specter whom you have seen is always visible. She is believed to be the spirit of a woman of inferior rank, whom one of my ancestors degraded himself by marrying, and whom afterwards, to expiate the dishonor done to his family, he caused to be drowned in the moat." So pretty much she forever haunts the family of her murderer as revenge for her death by visiting them every time one of theirs dies.
If you don’t already have chicken skin, Banshee isn’t exclusive to families of Irish descent. The last incidence of her appearance was a visit to a family English by name and origin. So, good luck.