o account for, what had happened.

"A near relation of mine," said he, "expired last night in the castle.
Before such an event happens in this family and castle, the female
spectre whom you have seen is always visible. She is believed to be
the spirit of a woman of inferior rank, whom one of my ancestors
degraded himself by marrying, and whom afterwards, to expiate the
dishonour done his family, he caused to be drowned in the castle
moat."

This, of course, was no other than the Banshee, which in times past
has been the source of so much terror in Ireland. Amongst the
innumerable stories told of its appearance may be mentioned one
related by Mrs. Lefanu, the niece of Sheridan, in the memoirs of her
grandmother, Mrs. Frances Sheridan. From this account we gather that
Miss Elizabeth Sheridan was a firm believer in the Banshee, and firmly
maintained that the one attached to the Sheridan family was distinctly
heard lamenting beneath the windows of the family residence before the
news arrived from France of Mrs. Frances Sheridan's death at Blois.
She adds that a niece of Miss Sheridan's made her very angry by
observing that as Mrs. Frances Sheridan was by birth a Chamberlaine, a
family of English extraction, she had no right to the guardianship of
an Irish fairy, and that therefore the Banshee must have made a
mistake.

Likewise, many a Scotch family has its death-warning, a notable one
being the Bodach Glass, which Sir Walter Scott has introduced in his
"Waverley" as the messenger of bad-tidings to the MacIvors, the truth
of which, it is said, has been traditionally proved by the experience
of no less than three hundred years. It is thus described by Fergus to
Waverley: "'You must know that when my ancestor, Ian nan Chaistel,
wanted Northumberland, there was appointed with him in the expedition
a sort of southland chief, or captain of a band of Lowlanders, called
Halbert Hall. In their return through the Cheviots they quarrelled
about the division of the great booty they had acquired, and came from
words to blows. The Lowlanders were cut off to a man, and their chief
fell the last, covered with wounds, by the sword of my ancestor. Since
that day his spirit has crossed the Vich Ian Vohr of the day when any
great disaster was impending.'" Fergus then gives to Waverley a
graphic and detailed account of the appearance of the Bodach: "'Last
night I felt so feverish that I left my quarters and walked out, in
hopes the keen fr