wolfinthewood | She Saw a Banshee

From thence [Limerick] we went to the Lady Honora O'Brien's, a lady that went for a maid, but few believed it. She was the youngest daughter of the Earl of Thomond. There we stayed three nights, the first of which I was surprised at being laid in a chamber where, about one o'clock, I heard a voice that awaked me. I drew the curtain, and in the casement of the window I saw by the light of the moon a woman leaning into the window through the casement, in white, with red hair and ghastly complexion. She spake loud, and in a tone I never heard, thrice "Ahone"; and then with a sigh more like wind than breath she vanished, and to me her body looked more like a thick cloud than substance. I was so much affrighted that my hair stood on end and my night-clothes fell off. I pulled and pinched your father, who never awaked during this disorder I was in, but at last was much surprised to find me in this fright – and more when I related the story and showed him the window opened. Neither of us slept more that night; but he entertained me with telling how much more those apparitions were usual in that country than in England. And we concluded the cause to be the great superstition of the Irish, and the want of that knowing faith that should defend them from the power of the devil, which he exercises amongst them very much. About eight o'clock the lady of the house came to see us, saying she had not been a-bed all night, because a cousin O'Brien of hers, whose ancestors had owned that house, had desired her to stay with him in his chamber, who died at two o'clock. "And," said she, "I wish you to have had no disturbance, for it is the custom of this place that when any die of this family, there is the shape of a woman appears in this window every night until they be dead. This woman was many ages ago got with child by the owner of this place, and he in his garden murdered her and flung her into the river under your window. But truly I thought not of it when I lodged you here, it being the best room I had." We made little reply to her speech, but disposed ourselves to be gone suddenly.

Ann, Lady Fanshawe (1625–1680), widow of Sir Richard Fanshawe, baronet, writing in 1676 about events in the winter of 1649. Her memoirs are addressed to her son Richard.

from The Memoirs of Ann, Lady Fanshawe (published in 1907)

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