Yeats in 1888
THE BANSHEE.
[THE banshee (from ban \bean\ a woman, and shee \sidhe\ a fairy) is an attendant fairy that follows the 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 and sing in chorus, it is for the death of some holy or great one. An omen that sometimes accom- panies the banshee is the coach-a-boiver \c6iste-bodhar\ an immense black coach, mounted by a coffin, and drawn by headless horses driven by a Dullahan. It will go rumbling to your door, and if you open it, according to Croker, a basin of blood will be thrown in your face. These headless phan- toms are found elsewhere than in Ireland. In 1807 two of the sentries stationed outside St. James's Park died of fright. A headless woman, the upper part of her body naked, used to pass at midnight and scale the railings. After a time the sentries were stationed no longer at the haunted spot. In Norway the heads of corpses were cut off to make their ghosts feeble. Thus came into existence the Dullahans, perhaps ; unless, indeed, they are descended from that Irish giant who swam across the Channel with his head in his teeth. ED.]
Yeats in 1890
THE BANSHEE.
[The banshee (from ban \bea7i\^ a woman, and sJiee \sidhe\ a fairy) is an attendant fairy that follows the 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 \caome\ 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 and sing in chorus, it is for the death of some holy or great one. An omen that sometimes accom- panies the banshee is the coach-a-bower [cdiste-bodhar] — an immense black coach, mounted by a coffin, and drawn by headless horses driven by a Dullahan. It will go rumbling to your door, and if you open it, according to Croker, a basin of blood will be thrown in your face. These headless phan- toms are found elsewhere than in Ireland. In 1807 two of the sentries stati'oned outside St. James's Park died of fright. A headless woman, the upper part of her body naked, used to pass at midnight and scale the railings. After a time the sentries were stationed no longer at the haunted spot. In Norway the heads of corpses were cut off to make their ghosts feeble. Thus came into existence the Dullahans^ perhaps j unless, indeed, they are descended from that Irish giant who swam across the Channel vvith his head in his teeth. — Ed.]
Includes bibliographical references
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Yeats in 1892
9. The Banshee (Ir. Bean-sidhe^ />. fairy woman). — This fairy, like the Far Gorta, differs from the general run of solitary fairies by its generally good disposition. She is perhaps not really one of them at all, but a sociable fairy grown solitary through much sorrow. The name corresponds to the less common Far Shee (Ir. Fear Sidhe), a man fairy. She wails, as most people know, over the death of a member of some old Irish family. Sometimes she is an enemy of the house and screams with triumph, but more often a friend. When more than one Banshee comes to cry, the man or woman who is dying must have been very holy or very brave. Occasionally she is most undoubtedly one of the sociable fairies. Cleena, once an Irish princess and then a Munster goddess, and now a Sheoque, is thus mentioned by the greatest of Irish antiquarians.
O'Donovan, writing in 1849 to a friend, who quotes his words in the Dublin University Magazine^ says : * When my grandfather died in- Leinster in 1798, Cleena came all the way from Ton Cleena to lament him ; but she has not been heard ever since lamenting any of our race, though I believe she still weeps in the mountains of Drumaleaque in her own country, where so many of the race of Eoghan More are dying of starvation.' The Banshee on the other hand who cries with triumph is often believed to be no fairy but a ghost of one wronged by an ancestor of the dying. Some say wrongly that she never goes beyond the seas, but dwells always in her own country. Upon the other hand, a distinguished writer on anthropology assures me that he has heard her on ist December 1867, in Pital, near Libertad, Central America, as he rode through a deep forest. She was dressed in pale yellow, and raised a cry like the cry of a bat. She came to announce the death of his father. This is her cry, written down by him with the help of a Frenchman and a violin.
He saw and heard her again on 5th February 1871, at 16 Devonshire Street, Queen's Square, London. She came this time to announce the death of his eldest child ; and in 1 884 he again saw and heard her at 28 East Street, Queen's Square, the death of his mother being the cause. The Banshee is called badh or bowa in East Munster, and is named Bachuntha by Banim in one of his novels.
Other Fairies and Spirits. — Besides the foregoing, we have other solitary fairies, of which too little definite is known to give them each a separate men- tion. They are the House Spirits, of whom *Teigue of the Lee' is probably an instance ; the Water Sherie, a kind of will-o'-the-wisp ; the Sowlth, a formless luminous creature ; the Pastha (Piast- bestia\ the lake dragon, a guardian of hidden treasure ; and the Bo men fairies, who live in the marshes of County Down and destroy the unwary. They may be driven away by a blow from a particular kind of sea -weed. I suspect them of being Scotch fairies imported by Scotch settlers. Then there is the great tribe of ghosts called Thivishes in some parts.
These are all the fairies and spirits I have come across in Irish folklore. There are probably many others undiscovered.
W. B. Yeats.
Co. Down, June 1891.
Authorities on Irish folklore: p. [234]-236
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Providing this, for context.
The entire section is rewritten. It doesn't even mention the Far Shee before or beyond this in the entire book. Not saying I know, but to me, this looks like one of those things you throw in your writing so you can identify plagiarists.