"Why, what's the matter, Mr O'Farrell," the girls said, laughingly. "You are as white as a sheet and trembling all over. You haven't seen a ghost, have you?"
"I haven't seen anything," O'Farrell retorted, a trifle nettled at their gaiety, "but I've heard some rather extraordinary sounds."
"Extraordinary sounds," Katherine laughed. "What on earth do you mean?"
"Just what I say," O'Farrell remarked. "When I was on the veranda just now I distinctly heard the sound of a harp in this room, and shortly afterwards I heard a woman weeping."
"It must have been someone outside in the street," Mr McMahon observed hastily, at the same time giving O'Farrell a warning glance from his dark and penetrating eyes. "We do occasionally receive visits from street musicians. I have something to say to you about the English and their rumoured new attack on the town," and drawing O'Farrell aside he whispered to him: "On no account refer to that music again. It was undoubtedly the Banshee, the ghost that my forefathers brought over from Ireland, and it is only heard before some very dreadful catastrophe to the family."
The following day Badajoz was stormed and entered by the English, and in the wild scenes that ensued, scenes in which the drunken English soldiery got completely out of hands, many Spanish--Spanish men and women--perished, as well as French, and among the casualties were the entire McMahon family.
Talking of phantom music, there is a widespread belief among Celtic races that whenever it is heard proceeding from the sea, either a death or some other great calamity is prognosticated. Such a belief is very prevalent along the coasts of Scotland, Wales, and Cornwall, and Mr Dyer, in his "Ghost World," p. 413, refers to it in Ireland. "Sometimes," he says, "music is heard at sea, and it is believed in Ireland that, when a friend or relative dies, a warning voice is discernible." To what extent this music is connected with Banshee hauntings it is, of course, impossible to say; but I have known cases in which it has owed its origin to the Banshee and to the Banshee only.
During the Civil War in America, for example, a transport of Confederate soldiers was making for Charlestown one evening, when a young Irish officer, who was leaning over the bulwarks and gazing pensively into the sea, was astonished to hear the very sweetest sounds of music coming from, so it seemed to him, the very depths of the blue waters. Thinking he must be dreaming, he called a brother officer to his side and asked him if he could hear anything.