"Banshie" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said the lady carelessly. "A couple of years ago I had a seven-ton cutter-rigged yacht, the Banshee, and we ran over to Madeira ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the stony-hearted, orange-coloured rooms, with the sleepless garcon sweeping and murmuring outside like a Banshee, while the hens roosted sociably in the gallery, the horses seemed to be champing directly under the bed, and the dead Huguenots bumping down upon the roof from the castle-walls. Another curious meal wafted from the bowels of the earth and cooled by all the airs that blow,—then ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... sense to him, and he didn't care. He marched his men up, with the thin wailing of a banshee in his ears. ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... scream. The ben-shie or banshee was a tutelar spirit, supposed to forebode by midnight howlings the death of a member of a family to which it was attached. The superstition is still ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... sidhe; Gaelic ban sith, "woman of the fairies"), a supernatural being in Irish and general Celtic folklore, whose mournful screaming, or "keening," at night is held to foretell the death of some member of the household visited. In Ireland legends of the banshee belong more particularly to certain families in whose records periodic visits from the spirit are chronicled. A like ghostly informer figures in Brittany folklore. The Irish banshee is held to be the distinction only of families of pure Milesian ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... their maerchen, as well as in the sagas of more backward nations. In the sagas of the advanced races, with rare exceptions, the most we get is what looks like a reminiscence of the episode in the occasional reappearance of the supernatural wife to her children, or as a Banshee. Putting this reminiscence, if it be one, aside for the present, we will first discuss some aspects of the bride's recovery. In doing so, though the natural order may seem to be inverted, we shall in ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... tilted and soared. Dave was thrown sidewise and had to fight for balance. He stared unbelievingly through the crystal shell. They rose like a Banshee jet. There was a shaggy, monstrous colossus in the distance, taller than the Himalayas—the man who had been beside them. Bork grunted. "Got it! We're all right now." He chanted something in a rapid undertone ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... on which they had come from Charlotte, and on which they had been promised a passage without change to Montreal, stopped, and they were transferred to a smaller steamer with the uncomfortable name of Banshee. She was very old, and very infirm and dirty, and in every way bore out the character of a squalid Irish goblin. Besides, she was already heavily laden with passengers, and, with the addition of the other steamer's people had now double her complement; and our friends doubted if they were ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... thou wilt, I shall hearken Some magic legend rare— How the Wizard's power did darken The sunny summer air: Thou'lt tell of Banshee's midnight wail, Or corpse-light's ghastly gleam— It matters not how wild the tale So love be not ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... read Phantasmagoria by that writer quaint but grand, Who penned The Hunting of the Snark and Alice in Wonderland. And I thought I knew a thing or two, or might be even three, About a Ghoul, and a Fay or Troll, and a Brownie or Banshee. I knew that a Banshee always howled, whilst a Goblin might but yawn, I also knew that a Poltergeist was not a Leprechaun, But the Psychicals, I'm bound to say, had me on "buttered toastes" With the wonderful changes which they rang on ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 5, 1891 • Various
... man pushing his bicycle. "And I guess old Sandy ain't made no mistake this time. He's caught the banshee!" ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... with pallid figure bowed, Like the Banshee in her shroud, Doth the moon her spectral shadow o'er some silent gravestone throw; Then moans the fitful wail, And the wanderer grows pale, Till at morning fades the phantom of the Spirit ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... day after, if you both fail, I shall be there myself with the clansmen from the Isles, who are already upon the sea. Here we part company, lads. When we meet again one of us shall not see the other two. Last night I heard the Banshee." ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... Irish ghosts, fairies, or bogles, the Banshee (sometimes called locally the "Boh[-e][-e]ntha" or "Bank[-e][-e]ntha") is the best known to the general public: indeed, cross-Channel visitors would class her with pigs, potatoes, and other fauna and flora of Ireland, and would expect her to make ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... he beside the sea From cloud capt Sleive mis of the shamrock vest? From near old castles, where the dread banshee Waits for the native lords when laid ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... Monday to come home but we failed. All the family have tried and failed. Three days after Jem had gone Walter went down and brought Monday home by main force in the buggy and shut him up for three days. Then Monday went on a hunger strike and howled like a Banshee night and day. We had to let him out or he would ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... banshee—I'm Larry O'Keefe. It's a far way from Ireland, but not too far for the O'Keefe banshee to travel if the O'Keefe was ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... back to me last night, after you left," said the Rector, laughing; "and he added omen to superstition by sitting under the window when I turned him out, and howling like a Banshee." ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... spirit is no norbury Banshee— To wail and, then, to vanish. She will stand With lifted flambeau, lighted by the hand That lights the stars, till she again is free, Inspiring normal man in every land With love of Freedom, by her scorn ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... hear him scuttling down the secret stair as fast as his legs would carry him, and when he emerged below, they watched him hurry away through the forest, casting fearful glances over his shoulder as he ran. Alan made a hollow of his two hands and sent after him a wild note, like the wailing of a banshee. ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... very subdued Turlough Wolf stated that the Black Woman was an old hag who wandered all over the land, that some called her crazy and others thought her inspired, and that his own belief was that she was a banshee, ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... that one old mat, trodden to shreds of rope-yarn, lies perishing upon the hearth. No curtain veils the darkness of the night, but the discoloured shutters are drawn together, and through the two gaunt holes pierced in them, famine might be staring in—the banshee of the man ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... much hurt if they were persuaded that the world would go on just the same if they and their family were utterly extinct, and that no eclipse would happen to portend that calamity. In Ireland, in certain great families, a Banshee, or a Benshee, for they differ who spell it, sits and wails all night when the head of the family is about to stretch his feet towards the dim portals of the dead; and in England are many families who, ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... aweather, and the fleet hung around awaiting the admiral's final decision. The night dropped down; the moon had no power over the rack of dark clouds, and the wind rose, calling now and again like the Banshee. A very drastic branch of Lewis Ferrier's education was about ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... replied the lady, transfixing me with a glance of her bright blue eyes, and I thought I could detect a rather equivocal expression about the corners of her beautiful mouth. This was not very encouraging, and not much liked, but she was a woman, and a lovely one, too much so by half to be a Banshee—I was on my guard, however, and ready, but the fog became so thick it was impossible to see three steps before us; in fact, it rolled over the church-yard wall in clouds. The lady linked her arm in mine, to prevent herself from ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... sulphuretted hydrogen for soft misty air and peat smoke. Here also you can see the wakes and christenings, the marriages and funerals, and the other fetes of the ol' counthry somewhat modified and darkened by American usage. The Banshee has been heard many times in Archey Road. On the eve of All Saints' Day it is well known that here alone the pookies play thricks in cabbage gardens. In 1893 it was reported that Malachi Dempsey was called "by the other people," and disappeared ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne
... singled out as the cry of despair itself, was often sung at The Poplars, sending such a sense of utter misery through the house, that poor Kitty Fagan would cross herself, and wring her hands, and think of funerals, and wonder who was going to die,—for she fancied she heard the Banshee's warning in those ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... stamped on my memory is of a grey, cheerless town where it rained hard almost the whole time, and a bitter wind blowing over the quays which moaned and sobbed like a lost banshee. ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan
... white sands, reported to be haunted by mermaids, and crevices of rock where the tide roared, and gave rise to legends of sea monsters, and giants turned to stone. He was becoming confidential and intimate when, in a lowered voice, he mentioned the Banshee's crag, where the shrouded messenger of doom never failed to bewail each dying child of the O'More, and where his own old nurse had actually beheld her keening for the uncle who was killed among the Caffres. Albinia began to know how she ought to ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... swept across the landscape; Crump and the pony looked soaked to the core; and I was admiring the Spartan devotion to duty that brought him out at this hour, in such weather, when he began another wailing like a castaway banshee: ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... be sure. He dug up a fairy-mount[2] against my advice, and had no luck afterwards. Though a learned man in the law, he was a little too incredulous in other matters. I warned him that I heard the very Banshee[3] that my grandfather heard under Sir Patrick's window a few days before his death. But Sir Murtagh thought nothing of the Banshee, nor of his cough, with a spitting of blood, brought on, I understand, by catching ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... not surprised. It was more than I had expected. The cry of the banshee in an American house was past belief, even in an atmosphere surcharged with fear and all the horror surrounding a great crime; and in the secret reckoning I was making against a person I will not even name at this juncture, I added it as another ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... silent for some moments, instantly raised his banshee battlecry, and Duke yelped in horror. Penrod made a wild effort to hold him; but Duke was not to be detained. Unnatural strength and activity came to him in his delirium, and, for the second or two that the struggle lasted, his movements were too rapid for the ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... poor English fetish p'raps," said Jeekie, as he removed the mask. "This real African god, howl banshee and all that sort into middle of next week. This Little Bonsa and no mistake, ten thousand years old and more, eat up lives, so many that no one can count them, and go on eating for ever, yes unto the ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... year's midnight, were crawling into eternity, the fierce December wind was sighing out its wearied farewell over the frozen streets; the thick white frosts were gathering on the window panes, in crystal shrubs and icy forests; December was howling, in a spectral voice, the ominous cry of the "Banshee," in anticipation of the old year's death. It was well nigh the hour of another day's dawn, but in the house of Henry Rayne everyone was astir. In the old, familiar home, where we have intruded so often upon happy inmates in their joy, we now steal an entrance, to witness the gloom, ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... "You banshee!" Francis withdrew the finger that had been keeping his place in the book. "I suppose I'll have to go back with you." He sat up, rather ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... for if he was dead the banshee would have cried. And the dead coach would have driven up with a rattle and stopped at our door. It never has, Miss Bawn. What you've heard has never stopped at our doors. To hear wheels in the distance is nothing. As for the cryin' ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... of Elfland In the under, in the over tone; Clear faint wailing of the far-heard banshee, Out of lands where never the sun shone, Calling doom on ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... And being Irish, don't you know, Celtic, as old Buffle used to say, charming songs, you know, about the Irish girl who has a plaid shawl—and a Banshee. [Sighs profoundly.] Poor ...
— Magic - A Fantastic Comedy • G.K. Chesterton
... long-drawn, quavering, banshee wail of a locomotive. The sound came from almost behind him, in an opposite direction from where he supposed the track to be. So he turned around and went back the other way. He crossed a half-dried-up runlet and climbed a small hill, ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... Those who make this an accusation, understand by superstition the belief in anything supernatural; and they consider as equally superstitious, veneration of a relic, belief in a miracle, a story of a banshee, or a legend of Finn Mac Cumhaill. Probably, if the Celts did not venerate relics, and believe in the possibility of miracles, we should hear far less of their superstitions. Superstition of the grossest kind is prevalent among the lower orders in every part of England, ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... were down in the servant's pantry where Polly was moaning and groaning and wailing like a banshee. ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... that I may rest, For all night did the Banshee weep." The priest raised up his hands and blest— "Go now, my child, ...
— The Fairy Changeling and Other Poems • Dora Sigerson
... least, it could do no harm. Her beliefs were not extravagant. She believed steadily in the Sacred Heart as the most generally useful of all Catholic devotions and approved of the sacraments. Her faith was bounded by her kitchen, but, if she was put to it, she could believe also in the banshee and in ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... bother them. Well, Eliphalet jumped at the suggestion. It suited him down to the ground. All of a sudden he remembered the spooks, and it knocked him all of a heap. He had told her about the Duncan Banshee, and the idea of having an ancestral ghost in personal attendance on her husband tickled her immensely. But he had never said anything about the ghost which haunted the little old house at Salem. He knew she would be ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... whether of joy or sorrow. These singular musicians are, as a rule, well taught, and can play almost any music, greatly preferring, however, their own compositions. Their music, consequently, is highly characteristic. It is the language of their lives and strange surroundings, a wild, weird banshee music: now all joy and sparkle, like sunshine on the plains; now sullen, sad, and pathetic by turns, like the wail of a crushed and oppressed people,—an echo, it is said, of the minstrelsy of the hegedosok or Hungarian bards, but sounding to ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... madam," commenced the landlord, frankly accepting the offered seat, "the case is this: About ten days ago there arrived in this city, by the ship Banshee, from Cork, a lady, gentleman, and child, with two servants, who came directly to this house. The gentleman registered his party as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Blondelle, child, nurse, and valet, and he engaged the very best rooms in the house—the ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... understand—with a determination to be a prophet, and, although I have ended in being an acrobat, a trained bear of the magazines, and a juggler of comic paragraphs, there was once carved upon my lips a smile which made many people detest me, for it hung before them like a banshee whenever they tried to be satisfied with themselves. I was informed from time to time that I was making no great holes in the universal plan, and I came to know that one person in every two thousand of the people I saw had heard of me, and that four ...
— The Third Violet • Stephen Crane
... enough. I heerd something scramin' all the night. I thought it might be a banshee, if thair is that crayther in this counthry. A bird, you say? What of that? Its squalling won't give us any iggs, nor lade ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... sure, but I reckon the call has come for me to cash in me checks. When that little devil Frost hit me right and left in me chest last night, I could see me finish; and I heard the banshee in me sleep, and that means ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... conditions, nine or ten knots was all we could get out of her; she was therefore not permitted to run any avoidable risks, and to this I attribute her extraordinary success where better boats failed. As long as daylight lasted a man was never out of the cross-trees, and the moment a sail was seen the 'Banshee's' stern was turned to it till it was dropped below the horizon. The look-out man, to quicken his eyes, had a dollar for every sail he sighted, and if it were seen from the deck first he was fined five. This may appear excessive, but the importance in blockade-running of seeing ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Captain Graham, however, stuck to his work, and very soon the specimens that he brought forward began to show a fixity of type both in head and in general outline. Brian was one of his best dogs, but he was not very large, as he only stood just over thirty inches at the shoulder. Banshee and Fintragh were others, but probably the best of Captain Graham's kennel was the bitch Sheelah. It was not, however, until towards the end of the last century that the most perfect dogs were bred. These included O'Leary, the property ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... be havin', savin' the childer. Mr. Timmy, him that's old Missis Halloran's youngest, but old enough to know better, he ups an' runs away to-day an' marries a Protestant gir-rl. An' if ye'll open y'r windy the bit av a crack, ye'll hear the poor old lady this minit, wailin' like a banshee." ...
— The Little Mixer • Lillian Nicholson Shearon
... rocks, passed more ruins. We stopped to examine these older ruins of the ancient O'Ruarkes. A Milesian gentleman showed us through them. It is the correct thing to have a ruin on your place; it is a kind of patent of gentility. If a banshee could be thrown in along with a ruin, a new man would give a great price for an old place. But banshees are getting scarce and decline to be caught. This ruin has been patched over, clumsily but earnestly, so that hardly a speck of the original ruin is ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... and desolation away from the flare of gas-lights and the raucous shouts of the crowds in Petticoat Lane—so that when I met him in a field of Flanders with the mist and the long, flat marshlands about him he confessed to the almighty Hump. And there was the Irish peasant who heard the voice of the Banshee calling through that mist, and heard other queer voices of supernatural beings whispering to the melancholy which had been bred in his brain in the wilds of Connemara. Here was the English mechanic, matter-of-fact, ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... the deadly little ball in its ebony runway was like nothing less than the exultant shriek of a banshee. Instantaneously (as if an accident had happened in the power house) every light in his body went out and left it cold ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... to have a banshee tick-tocking around the place; but that tidy little bunch of cylinders would have made a lot more noise ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... gloves on? You mean why does she wear them in-doors? Well, the fact is, the Montmorencis always do it. It's been a family peculiarity for centuries,—like the Banshee. And, besides, she does it to keep her hands delicate: they're just like roses—I mean white roses,—if you could only see 'em. But then she always ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... the wind nor the water Now stirred the night air, But a warning far sadder,—. The Banshee was there! Now rising, now swelling, On the night wind it bore One cadence, still telling, 'I ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... said this man from the sea. "I knew somebody was sure to come along when the O'Keefe banshee didn't ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... ha'nted,' says one; 'Jim an' me both encounters this yere banshee an' it's got fire eyes. Also, itse'f and pony is constructed of bloo flames. You can gamble! I don't want none of it in mine; an' ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... same night the Banshee howled To fright the evil dame, And fairy folks, who loved Kathleen, With funeral ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... to speak to him harshly," she said, a ripple of merriment in her voice, "for I'll tell you a secret. He did not try to stop me when I ran away—he even called after me, 'He's turned in at the church, you wild banshee!' They have told him things that have given him new respect for ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... with twenty brightly polished daggers and swords," we read in the Irish Tain Bo Cuailgne of the Badhbh or Banshee who appeared to Meidhbh, "together with seven braids for the dead, of bright gold, in her right hand; a speckled garment of green ground, fastened by a bodkin at the breast under her fair, ruddy countenance, enveloped her form; her teeth ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... banshee is a ghost, that the peasants in Ireland believe in. It stands outside their windows at night and wails dismally. Its appearance is supposed to foretell the death of a ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge
... when we were having our supper at our messing-place aft on the lower deck a little later on, "if thet theer vissil wor a raal ship, Tom, or a banshee?" ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... must needs address her as "a vile serpent, contaminator of his honourable race." So she disappeared through the window, but ever afterward hovered about her husband's castle of Lusignan, like a Banshee, whenever one of its lords ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... one another curiously, neither much afraid. In the deepening darkness, just freed from the primal terrors of the wood edge, I seemed to know why the deer finds the place a refuge. Here in the little sheltered hollow no goblins gibbered, no banshee wailed in the wet wood. Instead the sprout clumps seemed to rustle cheery assurance and the taller trees to bend in cozy friendliness over them. The soft fingers of the rain had a soothing touch and wind and darkness were kindly. I do not know why some spots in the woods ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... went and bought a castle, a real old castle, from an impoverished lord—with fine furniture, pictures, horses, hounds, plate, wines, whiskey, and a famous Banshee, who lived in an old turret, especially built for ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... then I doubt if a person of honour could make use of information from—from that quarter. Banshees are chiefly the spectres of attached and anxious old family nurses, women of the lower orders, and completely destitute of tact. I call a Banshee rather a curse than a boon and a blessing to men. Like most old family servants, they are apt ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... Evadne, because you know you are going to marry me when Colonel Colquhoun is promoted to regions of the blest. She would have married me first, only you stole a march on me, sir," he added, addressing Colonel Colquhoun. "However, I feel as if something were going to happen now, at last! There was a banshee wailing about my quarters in a minor key, very flat, last night. She had come all the way from Ireland to warn Colonel Colquhoun, and ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... of the brig secured. Blackbeard was absent for reasons best known to himself and his pirates lacked leadership. A brace of ghosts could put them to panic rout. And, no doubt, that wailing message of dead Jesse Strawn had carried like the cry of a banshee. ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... there, we could not have told that there were any craft of any kind in our neighbourhood. There had been no repetition of those strange, weird sounds that had startled us all earlier in the night, so Kennedy informed me; but he was still firmly convinced that they had emanated from the banshee, and when I laughingly tried to argue him out of his conviction he took me up rather sharply with the assertion that, had I been of Irish birth or extraction, I would know better than to make light of the matter. To my amazement, he seemed ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... to hear the wind scream like that," said Minny. "It is like the banshee. Hark! is not that some one ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... as a purr than anything else. 'You know, our places up in Ulster County are almost adjoining. At times I've been tempted to scale your wall. It looked so very attractive from outside. But they told me you kept a private banshee, trained to visit those you didn't like. You ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... bats, the owls, and rats so large and fierce that the very dogs were afraid of them. In the tower at night the neighbors affirmed that they heard shrieks and ghostly noises; and Nora, whose bedroom was nearest to it, rejoiced much in the distinction of having twice heard the O'Shanaghgan Banshee keening outside her window. Nora was a slender, tall, and very graceful girl of about seventeen, and her face was as typical of the true, somewhat wild, Irish beauty as Hannah Croneen's was ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... soon became a craze; And, when it once began, she Brought us all out in different ways - One was a Pixy, two were Fays, Another was a Banshee; ...
— Phantasmagoria and Other Poems • Lewis Carroll
... crumble, and his lumber did not crack. Riches are not acquired in the contracting business in that way. Ed Sheehan and his daughter were great friends. When he died (she was nineteen) they say she screamed once, like a banshee, and dropped to ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... ancestor of Niall of the Nine Hostages. Of this there is every possibility, since many Atlanteans undoubtedly escaped to Ireland, carrying with them the knowledge of Black Magic—to which might be traced the Banshee and ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... the mountains of the mainland, but Tom was still youthful, and we felt fairly safe in respect of the stability of the dull and heavy, and wind-swept firmament. As we watched, a cloud settled on the summit of Clump Point mountain, assuming shape as fancy pictures the Banshee—drooping head and shoulders, and arms with pendant drapery uplifted as in imprecation. The boys, in awe-struck attitude, pointed to the vapoury spectre, and prognosticated fearsome rain and wind. It all came during the night. Next morning one of the boys was eager ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... dismal, sobbing sound, like the wail of a strangling child! It was nothing but the howl of a wolf, and a wolf is about the last thing a man who knows the cowardly beast would be afraid of; but there was something so weird and unearthly in this "cry between the silences"—something so banshee-like in its suggestion of the grave—that, old mountaineers that we were, and long familiar with it, we felt an instinctive dread—a dread which was not fear, but only a sense of utter solitude and desolation. ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... under the castle walls, when, looking up, she saw a light in a window. Instantly she gave forth one of her wild songs. Some of those within who had heard of the famed Banshee were fully persuaded that it was a phantom visitor singing outside the gates, indicative of the speedy death of some one of consequence within. At length the ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... and told a story about a beautiful maiden in a lonely tower, and an old banshee that went about nights, howling, and knocking ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... ever an hour Will come that the heart-wraiths control, Till down from Eternity's tower A banshee ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris
... was in the sound, That froze my blood, and fix'd my eye; It seem'd to me a demon's shriek, Or wailing banshee's boding cry. ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... many of the figures of modern folklore, some of whom have perhaps replaced some ancient goddess, e.g. Frau Holda; others, like the Welsh Pwck, the Lancashire boggarts or the more widely found Jack-o'-Lantern (Will o' the Wisp), are sprites who do no more harm than leading the wanderer astray. The banshee is perhaps connected with ancestral or house spirits; the Wild Huntsman, the Gabriel hounds, the Seven Whistlers, &c., are traceable to some actual phenomenon; but the great mass of British goblindom cannot now be traced ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... marked it for a time worse than the small-pox. What the unnatural father would have done next, I do not know. While the cry of his son yet sounded in his ears, another cry like its echo from another world, rang ghastly through the storm like the cry of the banshee. From far away it seemed to come through the world of wet mist and howling wind. The next instant a spectral face flitted swift as a bird up to the window, and laid itself close to the glass. It was a French window, opening to the ground, and neither shutters nor curtains ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... no other than the Banshee, which in times past has been the source of so much terror in Ireland. Amongst the innumerable stories told of its appearance may be mentioned one related by Mrs. Lefanu, the niece of Sheridan, in the memoirs of her grandmother, Mrs. Frances Sheridan. From this account we gather that Miss Elizabeth ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... his head a tremendous Air Force Stratocruiser circled patiently. A thousand feet below him a flight of Navy Banshee fighters awaited clearance for landing. And climbing through the pattern came a division of Air ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine
... whispering echo, they repudiated all talk of acoustics. It was for them an eerie thing, like the laughter of elves or the shriek of a banshee. ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... paid her twenty-five dollars a month, and for nearly ten years she never let them out of her sight—crooning over them at night; trudging after them during the daytime; mending their clothes; brushing their teeth; cutting their nails; and teaching them strange Irish legends of the banshee. When I called her into the library and told her the children were now too old for her and that they must have a governess, the look that came into her face ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... out-of-doors, there came a single prolonged, piercing wail, such as a banshee might be imagined to utter. It ceased abruptly, ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... Devil's Lake The Keusca Elopement Pipestone The Virgins' Feast Falls of St. Anthony Flying Shadow and Track Maker Saved by a Lightning-Stroke The Killing of Cloudy Sky Providence Hole The Scare Cure Twelfth Night at Cahokia The Spell of Creve Coeur Lake How the Crime was Revealed Banshee of the Bad Lands Standing Rock The ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... story is told of an Irish gentleman—still known in London society—who inherited the family estates and the family banshee. The estates he lost—no uncommon circumstance in the history of Irish gentlemen,—but the banshee, who expected no favours, stuck to him in his adversity, and crossed the channel with him, making herself known only on ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... suppose I'll just have to sit here and wait for him to come back, after he's had his little turn. A queer boy Jimmie is, and inclined to be superstitious. Perhaps he's looking for a ghost right now, or one of those banshee's the Irish people believe in. Hello! I believe I hear something moving over there! Wonder if ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... pool— The Banshee robed in green— She sang yon song the whole night long, And washed the linen clean; The linen that would wrap the dead She beetled on a stone, She stood with dripping hands, blood-red, Low ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie
... Avenel, a spirit mysteriously connected with the Avenel family, as the Irish banshee is with true Milesian families. She announces good or ill fortune, and manifests a general interest in the family to which she is attached, but to others she acts with considerable caprice; thus she shows unmitigated malignity to the ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. |
