SUPERSTITIONS AND HAUNTINGS 259 



Corpse candles, strange flickering lights haunt 

 other famiUes and fling up their pale flames before 

 the windows as the dusk falls. The Banshee is 

 another warning, a woman who cries pitifully 

 before the death of one of the family. 



For the heads of the house she will come to 

 where they lie and make her moan. One belongs 

 to my father's family, and I can make no explana- 

 tion, but some unseen unknown woman wept 

 bitterly round the house for two days after his 

 death. I heard it and scarcely noticed it, but 

 strangers who came out went to one of my uncles 

 whispering that the woman who was crying so 

 loudly in the wood should be sent home for she 

 must disturb us all. 



There was no one in the wood. 



There is a curious story of our Banshee perhaps 

 worth telling as this is a chapter which sceptics 

 may laugh at at their leisure — or skip. 



Castle Fergus in Clare, was my grandfather's 

 old place, where Banshees and superstition flour- 

 ished in his time. One of my father's sisters who 

 had consumption, had gone to Queenstown and 

 was getting better there. 



In these days there were no trains, letters came 

 up by coach, and a man used to go down to the 

 bridge across the Fergus on the road to Ennis to 

 get the mail. 



One summer's evening he went as usual, to 

 return running wildly, fly past my uncles who 



