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STORIES OF
old families, and none but them, and wails before a death. Many have seen her as she goes wailing and clapping her hands. The keen (caoine), the funeral cry of the peasantry, is said to be an imitation of her cry. When more than one banshee is present, and they wail in chorus, it is for the death of some holy or great one. An omen that sometimes ac-companies the banshee is the coach-a-bower (coiste - bodhar), an immense black coach, mounted by a coffin and drawn by headless horses driven by a Dullahan. It will go rumb-ling to your door and if you open it, according to Croker, a basin of blood will be thrown in your face" says W. B. Yeats. The Fetch is supposed to be the exact form and resemblance, as to hair, stature, features, and dress, of a cer-tain person who is soon to depart from this world. It is also supposed to appear to the particular friend of the doomed one, and to flit before him without any warning or intimation, but merely the mystery of the appearance at a place and time where and when the real being could not be or appear. It is most frequently thought to be seen when the fated object is about to die a sudden death by unforeseen means, and then it is said to be abnormally disturbed and agitated in its motions. Unlike the superstition
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