The wail heard before a passing, the phantom coach, the knock at the darkened window: here an Irish clergyman-scholar gathers the omens that old families dreaded as heralds of loss.
The Reverend St John D. Seymour, co-author of True Irish Ghost Stories (1914), turns here to the death omen: the banshee whose cry attends certain ancient Irish families, and her lesser-known companions among the portents of mortality. Drawing on testimony, tradition, and long antiquarian reading, Seymour traces the history and varieties of these spectral warnings across Ireland, treating them not as idle superstition but as a genuine and enduring strand of the island's belief.
This edition features:
- A focused study of the banshee and kindred omens that Irish tradition linked to approaching loss
- Material drawn from the scholarship of Seymour, co-author of the landmark 1914 survey of Irish ghost lore
- Accounts of portents, spectral coaches, and family tokens rooted in Gaelic popular belief
- A concise, sober guide to one of the most enduring figures of Irish supernatural legend