No country besides Ireland possesses a Banshee, though some countries possess a family or national ghost…
- Date of account
- Published 1920
- Source
- The Banshee
- Reference
- The Banshee · selected passage 63
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-24
Record summary
No country besides Ireland possesses a Banshee, though some countries possess a family or national ghost somewhat resembling it
Published source text
Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.
Source passage
Source text · mention onlyNo country besides Ireland possesses a Banshee, though some countries possess a family or national ghost somewhat resembling it. In Germany, for example, popular tradition is full of rumours of white ladies who haunt castles, woods, rivers, and mountains, where they may be seen combing their yellow hair, or playing on harps or spinning. They usually, as their name would suggest, wear white dresses, and not infrequently yellow or green shoes of a most dainty and artistic design. Sometimes they are sad, sometimes gay; sometimes they warn people of approaching death or disaster, and sometimes, by their beauty, they blind men to an impending peril, and thus lure them on to their death. When beautiful, they are often very beautiful, though nearly always of the same type--golden hair and long blue eyes; they are rarely dark, and their hair is never of that peculiar copper and golden hue that is so common among Banshees.
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis material belongs to a folklore tradition. Story type, collector, community, transmission and literary editing matter when comparing it with other sources.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyLattice compares motifs and reported features without assuming that a traditional being is a biological species or that similar stories document one external cause.
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