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FAMOUS SONGS
of the Banshee, there is no accounting for the coming of this forerunner of death ; there is no tracing it to any defined origin; but that it does come, a shadowy phantom of doom arid terror, and often comes, is firmly believed by the Irish peasantry, and many curious stories and circumstances are related to confirm the truth of the superstition. While the Theosophists boast of their Spooks, the Irish can point to their Phooka, which is a fairy of very repre-hensible habits, who assumes all sorts of shapes and sizes and frightens the good and bad in-differently. "The Keen"—properly Caoine— is the dirge sung over the dead in Ireland ; the word is derived from the Hebrew Cina, pro-nounced Kec7iy which signifies weeping with clapping of hands. They are still performed, and the effect of one of these painfully dramatic dirges chanted in a plaintive minor is indescrib-ably harrowing to the hearer.
So many songs with the same or similar sentiments and titles seem to have appeared in each country—England, Ireland, and Scot-land—at about the same time, that it is no easy matter to decide whose claim carries the most weight. Now " Over the hills and far away" has been common property throughout Great Britain as a song and as a saying for
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