Book Description:
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill BANSHEES AND WARNINGS Cuchulain went on his way, and Cathbad that had followed him went with him. And presently they came to a ford, and there they saw a young girl, thin and white skinned and having yellow hair, washing and ever washing, and wringing out clothing that was stained crimson red, and she crying and keening all the time. ' Little Hound,' said Cathbad, 'Do you see what it is that young girl is doing ? It is your red clothes she is washing, and crying as she washes, because she knows you are going to your death against Maeve's great army.1' 'Cuchulain of Muirthemne.' From Cuchulain' s day, or it may be from a yet earlier time, that keening woman of the Sidhe has been heard giving her lamentable warning for those who are about to die. Rachel had not yet been heard mourning for her children when the white skinned girl whose keening has never ceased in Ireland washed red clothes at the ford. It was she or one of her race who told King Brian he was going to meet his death at Clontarf; though after the defeat ofthe old gods that warning had often been sent by a more radiant messenger, as when Columcille at the dawn of the feast of Pentecost 'lifted his eyes and saw a great brightness and an angel of God waiting there above him.' And Patrick himself had his warning through his angel, Victor, who met him on the road at midday and bade him go back to the barn where he had lodged the night before, for it was there he had to die. Such a messenger may have been at hand at the death of that Irish born mystic, William Blake, when he 'burst out into singing of the things he saw in Heaven, and made the rafters ring.' And a few years ago the woman of a thatched house at the foot of Echtge told me ' There were great wonders done in the old times; and when my father th...
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