agitated and troubled in her appearance, and unusually loud
and mournful in her lamentations. Some would fain have it that
this strange being is actuated by a feeling quite inimical to the
interests of the family which she haunts, and that she comes with joy
and triumph to announce their misfortunes. This opinion, however,
is rejected by most people, who imagine her their most devoted friend,
and that she was, at some remote period, a member of the family,
and once existed on the earth in life and loveliness. It is not
every Irish family can claim the honour of an attendant banshee;
they must be respectably descended, and of ancient line, to have
any just pretensions to a warning spirit. However, she does not
appear to be influenced by the difference of creed or clime, provided
there be no other impediment, as several Protestant families of
Norman and Anglo-Saxon origin boast of their own banshee; and to
this hour several noble and distinguished families in the country
feel proud of the surveillance of that mysterious being. Neither
is she influenced by the circumstances of rank or fortune, as she
is oftener found frequenting the cabin of the peasant than the
baronial mansion of the lord of thousands. Even the humble family
to which the writer of this tale belongs has long claimed the
honourable appendage of a banshee; and it may, perhaps, excite an
additional interest in my readers when I inform them that my present
story is associated with her last visit to that family.

Some years ago there dwelt in the vicinity of Mountrath, in the
Queen's County, a farmer, whose name for obvious reasons we shall
not at present disclose. He never was married, and his only domestics
were a servant-boy and an old woman, a housekeeper, who had long
been a follower or dependent of the family. He was born and educated
in the Roman Catholic Church, but on arriving at manhood, for