To be warned of death by a banshee was traditionally the privilege – a dubious one – of certain old Irish families. In his Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft (1838), Sir Walter Scott summarised this as follows:
“If I am rightly informed, the distinction of a banshie (sic) is only allowed to families of the pure Milesian stock, and is never ascribed to any descendant of [even] the proudest Norman or boldest Saxon who followed the banner of Earl Strongbow, much less to adventurers of later date who have obtained settlements in the Green Isle.”
He went on to note, however, that “several families of the Highlands of Scotland anciently laid claim to the distinction of an attendant spirit, who performed the office of the Irish banshie.” This might explain one of the more famous reported occurrences, in Wicklow during the early hours of August 6th, 1801.
The unfortunate subject of the banshee’s services on that occasion was the Scottish-born aristocrat Robert Cuninghame, aka Lord Rossmore, a former MP and British Army officer, who lived most of his life on a large estate near what is today Newtownmountkennedy.
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So either this was one of the Scottish associate-banshees, operating outside her jurisdiction, or it was a local one, making an exception to the usual rules.
In any case, the event was supposedly witnessed not by the man himself but by his next-door neighbour: lawyer, judge and politician, Jonah Barrington (1756-1834). It thereby earned a place in Barrington’s colourful memoirs, a bestseller of the 1830s and later.
Although a great storyteller, the author was not the most reliable of narrators. But he was an entertaining chronicler of what were turbulent times in Ireland and his memoir was required reading for decades afterwards.
In Ulysses, for example, James Joyce has the character Tom Kernan, walking near Dublin’s Thomas Street and thinking about the 1798-1803 period: “Times of the troubles. Must ask Ned Lambert to lend me those reminiscences of sir Jonah Barrington.”
Of his various misadventures, Barrington described the banshee episode as “the most extraordinary and inexplicable of my whole existence, an occurrence which for many years occupied my thoughts”.
The occasion was the eve of one of Lord Rossmore’s weekly summer parties, to which the neighbours were invited. Barrington went to bed at midnight but was woken just before 2am by a strange noise that “resembled neither a voice nor an instrument”. It was “softer than any voice, and wilder than any music, and seemed to float in the air”.
His nerves jangling, he woke Mrs Barrington, who had somehow slept through it until then. She heard it too and initially thought it was an “Eolian harp”, an instrument played by the wind. “My wife at first appeared less affected than I, but subsequently she was more so,” Barrington wrote.
From a window overlooking the garden, they deduced that the sound came from a grassy area just below them. Then they called a maid, who heard it too and “was more affected than either of us”. Eventually, the sound was accompanied by a “deep, heavy throbbing sigh”, followed by a “sharp but low cry, and by the distinct exclamation, thrice repeated, of: “Rossmore – Rossmore – Rossmore!”
At that, the maid “fled in terror”. Soon afterwards, half an hour after it started, the music stopped. Then the Barringtons went back to bed, struggling to make sense of the incident, but deciding to keep quiet about it:
“Lady Barrington, who is not so superstitious as I, attributed this circumstance to a hundred different causes and made me promise that I would not mention it next day [at the party], since we would be thereby rendered laughing-stocks.”
But of course there was no party, because morning brought news that Rossmore – who had been the best of health despite his 75 years – was dead. His man servant had found him unwell at about “half after two” and within minutes, “all was over”.
Bedroom terrors were a common occurrence in Wicklow then, it seems. Barrington had bought his own property, “at a very moderate price”, after the previous owner, the Countess Dowager of Mayo, left in a hurry.
Just after the 1798 rebellion, she “discovered a man concealed under her bed, and was so terrified that she instantly fled from her country residence … and never after returned”. That was a real man, we presume. But perhaps the banshee was politically motivated too. If so, she seems to have been implicated in manslaughter, at least.
Aware that his story would raise disapproving eyebrows, Barrington sought to defend himself in advance against sceptics, placing the incident in the context of his religious beliefs and by extension his openness to the supernatural:
“Atheism may ridicule me, Orthodoxy may despise me, bigotry may lecture me, Fanaticism might burn me, yet in my very faith I would seek consolation. It is, in my mind, better to believe too much than too little, and that is the only theological crime of which I can be fairly accused.”
