The Banshee of Killala

There is a story told in the Emerald Isle about a faithful farmer, whilst on a journey of mercy in the night hours, who heard a faint wailing cry. The cry, faint at
first, flared louder with ever step he took.

At first it sounded to him like a poor wee lass a-weeping and whimpering for a smitten love; then he thought the sound might be the whine of a lost whelp. It was neither a pitiable maiden weeping nor a tiny animal pup whining, but the spirit of a wailing woman in plaintive lamentation.

The good man, Liam Fennian by name, was, at that time, treking along the path under Nehim Mount in County Mayo to a friend of the sod in Killala town. "The poor devil be sick with the pox and the good doctors had been shaking their heads," he muttered to himself. The thoughts to his friend were shattered as the cry of lament rose to a higher pitch.

The mornful sounds came in shrieks of weeping and wailing as he stepped foward towards the source. "Banshee be it?" he exclaimed in frightened words, "Nay, tis' be the drinking that bedevilled me eyes! I be getting on me years imagining such a thing."

But the continuing wailing was a black note of warning of impending doom that foretold the coming of Father Death, which Liam Finnian didn't understand.

The crying grew louder as every foward step of the good man. Then he knew it wasn't the bitter ale that was the source of the deep lamenting cry. Liam's rotund body then stood frozen in its stance; his thick legs from the calves to the tips of his very toes shivered from the sound of the lamenting cry. His reddish hair rose on top of his lined florid face; his watery blue eyes were transfixed with fright and his thick lips were opened in suprise.

In great dread, he reconized the apparition coming towards him. The banshee's withered flesh was covered in a wispy shroud of green and cloaked in gray cloth. The wizened hag had long streaming hair and her eyes were red in weeping. All the time calling out the note to the coming of the Eternal Reaper in a wailing cry.