WARNINGS OF DEATH.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2370, 20 December 1921, Page 4

WARNINGS OF DEATH.

FAMILY GHOSTS APPEAR,

WHAT WITNESSES HAVE

SEEN.

Ireland and the north of England probably possess enough ghosts to populate a continent, both these positions of the United Kingdom being prolific in stories of apparitions of all kinds. 'The northern counties seem to favour as death-warnings such phenomena as “spectral coaches” and “headless men,” while-Ireland, possibly on account of the country being more poetical, goes in largely for miisic and “beautiful women.” The banshee, or family death-warning, is generally the apparition of some victim of cruelty, or assassination, who, one imagines, exacts vicarious vengeance for deeds committed in the past by foretelling the death" of some member of the present family. II seems rather a reversal of things that the unhappy victim should be earth-bound, restless, homeless, but one’s sense of poetic justice can be satisfied in the thought that there is probably a worse destiny for the soul of the actual offender. A former member of the house of O’Brien was guilty of a peculiarly atrocious murder, since which time report has it this family has been haunted by a tall and beautiful woman in white. She does not confine her attentions to the head of the house, but appears at odd moments when any great O’Brien is about to join the shades. Lady Fanshawe, the seventeenth century diarist, tells of an uncanny encounter with this ghost, and it is worthy of note —this lady was not by any means a. spiritualist, and was certainly far more concerned with matters of the world. Yet she sets the occurrence down in her diary without break and without comment, as though, alarming as it was, it were no more out of the ordinary than a carriage accident. Lady Fanshawe, with her husband, on their travels through Ireland, had been invited to stay with Lady Honour O’Brien, youngest daughter of the Earl of Tromond, and on visiting this ancestral home, found the house large, gloomy and not altogether to their liking. They were not long in making up their minds to curtail their stay, and subsequeht events hastened their departure.

ETHEREAL LADY IN WHITE. On the second night of their stay, having retired late, Lady Fanshawe lay for some time awake . She took notice of the large, gloomy room, with its sombre hangings, made all the more mysterious by a ray of moonlight which struck into the room through the parting of the casements. She was almost falling asleep, when the room was filled with a sudden icy chill. Lady Fansliaw sat up in bed, and, says she: “I heard a voice that fully awakened me. I drew the curtain of the bed, and, in the window I saw, by the light of the moon, a woman leaning out of the window, in white, with red hair and pale.and ghastly complexion"; suddenly she spoke loud, and in a tone I had. never heard" before: A horse! A horse! \ horse! And then with- a sigh, more like the v/ind than breath, she vanished, and to me her body looked more like a thick cloud than substance. I was so frightened that my ‘hair stood on end.’ ” Thus, in a few words, does Lady Fanshawe graphically describe her weird experience, and it should be noted that she, like so many others who say they have seen ghosts, states that (he apparition looked more like a thick cloud than substance. But whatever it was. she saw, the completion of the incident is to come, for next morning she was aroused early by Lady Honour, who infoi’med her that a cousin O’Brien had died suddenly in the night. Lady Fanshawe then related her experience, the story meeting with no incredulity on the part of her hostess, who then recounted the history of the banshee. The lady in white, who cried so loudly for a horse, was a beautiful girl who had lived in the neighbourhood some three hundred years previously, and on account of her charms had been abducted by an O’Brien. When the matter could no longer be kept a secret, this pleasant mannered man had slain his mistress and her child and flung their bodies into a ditch beneath the walls of the house. For this deed no punishment was meted out by his fellow-mortals, and the wronged lady has exacted retribution from him and his descendants in the guise of a banshee. GHOSTLY DRUM AND MUSIC. One of the most famous deatliwarnings is that attributed to the home of the Earls of A . This messenger of ill-omen is accompanied by the sound 'of music and drums, and has been heard on numerous occasions. The most lucid account is contained in the pei-sonal memoirs of a Miss D , who had rather an unfortunate experience whilst staying as a guest of'-ihe earl. v

The lady, on her arrival ta the earl’s castle, was allotted a large and comfortable room in one of the towers overlooking the moat, or rather the hollow space where once had been the waters of the moat. Whilst preparing her toilet for dinner on the first evening of her visit, she was interested to hear strains of music beneath her window, which finally resolved itself into the welldefined and rhythmic tap of a drum. Supposing that this were some entertainment in progress for the guests, Miss D inquired about it of her maid, and was exceedingly

surprised -to find that the maid knew nothing of it, though it might reasonably have been supposed that the music would be heard throughout the whole castle. ,

During dinner that same evening the subject of the music entering her mind, Miss D turned to Lord A , and said in a joking manner, “My lord, who is your drummer?” The effect of - this lightly-put question was instantaneous and startling. Lord A turned pale, and Lady A showed signs of distress, whilst a sudden and uncanny silence fell upon the guests. Miss D—, thoroughly taken aback at the extraordinary effect of her question, quickly changed the subject, and the incident passed without further words or any explanation.

Miss D -, subsequently visitingfriends of the earl in the neighbourhood, mentioned this weird dinner episode, and was quickly enlightened. “I don’t wonder at your question causing some consternajion,” said her present host, “for that music of drums you heard is a herald of approaching death in I lie A family. And if there is one subject more than another that tbeen rl dreads it is that; so you see that your obviously having heard their banshee, and springing the fact on them like that, would naturally upset the earl.”

That Miss D had heard the death warning of the A ’s is only too well proven, for a few weeks later Lady A — died suddenly; in her desk was found a note saying that she knew that the drums heard by Miss D were for her. The cause of this peculiar form of death warning is said to originate in a murder in the fifteenth century. The Lord A of the day, tradition says, had occasion to become jealous of an officer attached (o his garrison, and in a fit of rage thrust into his drum and hurled from a window into the moat a boy drummer sent with a message, from the officer in question. Since which time the boy’s spirit has haunted the family of A in this peculiar fashion.