A Digest of Lady Fanshawe’s Brush with the Banshee (Co. Clare)

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banshee at window

For nearly 300 years there is no other Clare banshee tale, till the famous one of 1642 in the Memoires of Lady Fanshawe, (published in I665). It is so well known that a brief abstract will suffice. Her Ladyship, staying with some of the O’Briens, was sleeping in a room, of which the window overhung water at some height, at a castle, perhaps Bunratty or Castle Lake. She was awakened by a horrible scream, and saw a girl outside the window. The apparition was pale, rather handsome, and with her reddish hair hanging dishevelled over her shoulders. After some time the unwelcome visitor vanished, with other ghastly shrieks. In the morning Lady Fanshawe, telling her tale, was told of the death of a relative of the family whose illness had been concealed from her. The spirit was that of the peasant wife of a former owner of the castle, drowned in the moat by her husband and of evil omen to his descendants. Westropp ‘Clare’ 189

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