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The Banshee: A Fiction and Literature, Ghost Stories Classic By Elliott O'Donnell! AAA+++
The Banshee: A Fiction and Literature, Ghost Stories Classic By Elliott O'Donnell! AAA+++
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It is strictly a family ghost, and most authorities agree that it only haunts families of very ancient Irish lineage. Mr McAnnaly, for instance, remarks (in the chapter on Banshees in his "Irish Wonders"): "The Banshee attends only the old families, and though their descendants, through misfortune, may be brought down from high estate to ranks of peasant farmers, she never leaves nor forgets them till the last member has been gathered to his fathers in the churchyard."
A writer in the Journal of the Cork Historical and Archæological Society (Vol. V., No. 44, pp. 227-229) quotes an extract from a work entitled "Kerry Records," in which the following passage, relating to an elegiac poem written by Pierse Ferriter on Maurice Fitzgerald, occurs: "Aina, the Banshee who never wailed for any families who were not of Milesian blood, except the Geraldines, who became 'more Irish than the Irish themselves'; and in a footnote (see p. 229) it is only 'blood' that can have a Banshee. Business men nowadays have something as good as 'blood'--they have 'brains and brass,' by which they can compete with and enter into the oldest families in England and Ireland. Nothing, however, in an Irishman's estimation, can replace 'blue blood.'"
Sir Walter Scott, too, emphasises this point, and is even more specific and arbitrary. He confines the Banshee to families of pure Milesian stock, and declares it is never to be found attached to the descendants of the multitudinous English and Scotch settlers who have, from time to time, migrated to Ireland; nor even to the descendants of the Norman adventurers who accompanied Strongbow to the Green Isle in the twelfth century.
It is strictly a family ghost, and most authorities agree that it only haunts families of very ancient Irish lineage. Mr McAnnaly, for instance, remarks (in the chapter on Banshees in his "Irish Wonders"): "The Banshee attends only the old families, and though their descendants, through misfortune, may be brought down from high estate to ranks of peasant farmers, she never leaves nor forgets them till the last member has been gathered to his fathers in the churchyard."
A writer in the Journal of the Cork Historical and Archæological Society (Vol. V., No. 44, pp. 227-229) quotes an extract from a work entitled "Kerry Records," in which the following passage, relating to an elegiac poem written by Pierse Ferriter on Maurice Fitzgerald, occurs: "Aina, the Banshee who never wailed for any families who were not of Milesian blood, except the Geraldines, who became 'more Irish than the Irish themselves'; and in a footnote (see p. 229) it is only 'blood' that can have a Banshee. Business men nowadays have something as good as 'blood'--they have 'brains and brass,' by which they can compete with and enter into the oldest families in England and Ireland. Nothing, however, in an Irishman's estimation, can replace 'blue blood.'"
Sir Walter Scott, too, emphasises this point, and is even more specific and arbitrary. He confines the Banshee to families of pure Milesian stock, and declares it is never to be found attached to the descendants of the multitudinous English and Scotch settlers who have, from time to time, migrated to Ireland; nor even to the descendants of the Norman adventurers who accompanied Strongbow to the Green Isle in the twelfth century.
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