Irish Wonders: Pookas and Banshees

Irish Wonders

I just finished a book of Irish wonders and want to focus today on Pookas and Banshees, with a short aside about some other traditional Irish beliefs. Irish Wonders by D. R. McAnally, Jr. is another weeded library book full of Irish fairy and folk tales. If you love physical books as I do, here’s the info: Houghton, Mifflin and Company originally published Wonders in 1888. Grand River Books republished it in 1971. The volume is delightfully illustrated by H. R. Heaton. The library purchased it in 1974 for $12.00; the date due list on the back page indicates that the book was checked out a total of four times–twice in 1977, once in 1983, and once in 1988. 

Irish Wonders has quite the descriptive subtitles: The Ghosts, Giants, Pookas, Demons, Leprechawns, Banshees, Fairies , Witches, Widows, Old Maids, and Other Marvels of the Emerald Isle: Popular Tales as Told by the People.

The Irish Storyteller

According to the author, the stories were collected on a long trip across the island and told in the voices of the ‘“peasant tenantry.” He asks the reader to imagine their “charms of gesticulation and intonation, for no pen can do justice to a story told by Irish lips amid Irish surroundings.” However, in introducing the legend of the cave (‘Satan as Sculptor”), the author concedes: “The legend of the cave was told by an old ‘wise woman’ of the neighborhood with a minuteness of detail that rendered the narrative more tedious than graphic.” 

Most of these stories, which range far and wide in subjects, are about people hoping to outwit demons and bedeviling creatures, which they can succeed at if they know the weak spots. Every supernatural creature appears to have some kryptonite, but discovering what it is can be a challenge.

The Pooka

In “Taming the Pooka,” a man who’s had too much to drink one night decides to take a nap in the road before continuing home. He awakens to what he thinks is a horse talking to him and kicking him, demanding that he hop on its back and get a ride back to his cottage. “It looks like the finest black horse that iver wore shoes. But it is n’t a horse at all, for no horse ‘ud have eyes av fire, or be breathin’ flames av blue wid a shmell o’ sulfur, savin’ yer presence, or a shnort like thunder, and no mortial horse ‘ud take the lapes it does, or go as fur widout gettin’ tired.”

That the Pooka takes the man on a hair-raising ride all over the island, causing him to be laid up for a fortnight, is no surprise as in the “owld days, the counthry was full av avail sper’ts.” The following image is a paragraph about all the creatures a person could meet on the regular. 

In earlier days, people aren’t as lucky as our friend above. The Pooka would make off with drunks and then murder them. No one misses them, so King Bryan-Boru doesn’t pay any attention to the harm they cause until one night his baby falls ill. He sends a servant on his white mare to fetch the doctor. The servant doesn’t want to go and so dawdles. (As I mentioned in an earlier post, a servant not getting the job done is a recurring trope in Irish and British folktales.)  “Well, the babby got well agin, bekase the docther did n’t get there”* but the king realizes the Pooka has stolen his beautiful and irreplaceable white mare. (He doesn’t reflect on the loss of the servant.)

Taming the Pooka

Now knowing that he must rein in the Pooka, the king spends seven days and nights reading numerous vast volumes without stopping except to eat. After learning the secret of taming the supernatural horse, he goes out on a dark night and meets the Pooka under the pretext of traveling to help an old widow. After a lengthy conversation with the Pooka that gains its trust, the king gets it to open its mouth and show its teeth, creating the opportunity for him to slip three Pooka hairs around the creature’s jaw, which become steel cords of a bridle. After spurring the Pooka bloody and riding it to near collapse, the king makes the creature promise never to steal another horse, never kill another man, and “barrin’ furrin blaggards that was n’t Irish, an’ whin he give a man a ride, he must bring him back to the shpot he got him an’ lave him there.”

While “Taming the Pooka” has a nice dose of humor and ends happily, the chapter on Banshees is a run down of the specific behaviors of a usually terrifying female creature. The author (not without bias) attributes this range to the Irish imagination, which is “so lively as to endow the legends of the Emerald Isle with the individuality not possessed of those of most other nations, while the Irish command of language presents the creatures of Hibernian fancy in a garb so vividly real and yet so fantastically original as to make an impression sometimes exceedingly startling.” 

The Banshees

New to me are the numerous names for a banshee: the Female Fairy, the Woman of Peace, the Lady of Death, the Angel of Death, the White Lady of Sorrow, the Nymph of the Air, and the Spirit of the Air. I did know that the banshee is a disembodied soul of someone who was strongly attached to the family or who “had good reason to hate all its members.” I didn’t know that the banshee who is attached by affection to a family has a low, soft chant “with a tenderness of tone that reassures the one destined to die and comforts the survivors.” It’s the enemy of the family that I think of when I hear the word ‘banshee:’ “the cry is the scream of a fiend, howling with demonic delight over the coming death-agony of another of her foes.”

Spirits of the Dead

New-to-me spirits-of-the-dead details found in the chapter on banshees:

• At weddings, they are frequently unseen guests.
• They are always at funerals.
• Their presence is recognized by mysterious music known to be of unearthly origin.
• The spirits of the good act as guardian angels.
• The spirits of the evil are restrained in their actions, and are compelled to do penance at or near the place where their crimes were committed. 
• The spirits of the bad can be: chained at the bottom of lakes, buried underground, confined in mountain gorges, left to hang off the side of precipices, transfixed to tree-tops, or haunt the homes of their ancestors.
• All malign spirits are enduring penance after which they will be released.

A Few Banshee Facts

Details specific to banshees:

• A banshee will never forget her family or leave it until the last member is dead.
• The song of a banshee is heard a day or two before the death of which it gives notice.
• The wail of the banshee is commonly heard at night though it is possible that it comes during the daytime.

Scary Legend Facts

Interesting asides about scary legends:

• The last person buried in a graveyard must carry water to the souls of Purgatory until the next corpse comes to take his place. 
• The devil can take any shape he pleases and does so to tempt poor sinners to their destruction.
• If you catch the devil on holy ground, you can do with him as you please.

Coming Up: Widows and Old Maids

I posted on fairies here and here. A number of the tales in Irish Wonders concern love. Some of them are sad (overbearing fathers insist on bad matches, death separates lovers), but more often, the stories of marriage and matches are misogynistic tales. You might have noticed that the book’s subtitle includes widows and old maids in the ‘marvels of the Emerald Isle.’ Next week, I’ll take a look at those and how some old tales can make the modern reader cringe.

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1. While I don’t doubt this is true, the author’s effort to replicate the Irish brogue does little more than make the book a slow read. I’m including some examples of the text so you can get an idea.
2. I can’t help but think of Uncle Colm McCool in the show Derry Girls (Netflex US). If you’ve not watched this, you are missing big laughs and a few ugly cries.
3. This sort of humor is a feature of many of the stories. Another feature is that the English are often called out for the misery they have inflicted on the Irish. Even the pious Saint Kevin, who figures in tales both in Irish Wonders and The Personnel of Fairyland, calls out “thim blaggard landlords in England,” who are taking all the money out of the country.