The tale
in question is T. Crofton Croker’s “The Banshee of the MacCarthys,” available
as part of William Butler Yeats’ 1888 collection of accounts by Irish
storytellers about encounters between Irish peasantry and not only “the fairy
people,” but other occult-adjacent beings such as ghosts and witches.
The
greatest pat of Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry is devoted to
fairies, those supernatural beings whose
origin story identifies them as either fallen angels (who were “not good enough
to be saved, nor bad enough to be lost”) or ancient earth deities — the Tuatha
De Danan — whose worship dwindled with the arrival of Roman Catholicism,
leaving them much diminished.
An
appealing aspect of the book is its openness to the great diversity of fairy
folk both in appearance and behavior. Irish tales speak not only of human-appearing
fairies that snatch children, abduct women, and enslave men with enchantment,
but also of leprechauns, pooka, and banshees. It is this latter type of fairy,
the banshee, that is obviously at the center of Croker’s “The Banshee of the
MacCarthys.”
The
banshee in this story deserves consideration, but that won’t be the focus of
this blog post. Let’s save that contemplation for Grandfather Hu Reviews blog,
and focus here on the chief human protagonist Charles MacCarthy, the 24-year-old
nobleman who in 1749 died and returned from the dead with a wild story and an
even wilder change of personality.
Worth
considering up front is Charles’ financial status as a member of the upper
middle class, his standing being a rung or two below his high-born companions from
the upper crust of Irish society. The youthful noble sons seem to have at worst
tolerated Charles enough to include him in their nightly escapades in the local
pubs, at least temporarily overlooking his somewhat inferior financial status.
The
MacCarthy family was not filthy rich, but neither were they poor. They had
servants in their household and enough property to keep a large number of
“peasants” engaged. Charles even had a foster brother, a childhood playmate
whose destiny was to become the servant of his “young master.”
But their
wealth, property, and lineage were not to be compared to that of the young
heirs apparent that Charles considered his best friends and drinking buddies.
The
narrator of this story[i] forthrightly expresses the
assumption that these friends of Charles, these members of the Irish nobility
whose “fortunes were larger than his own,” were somehow expected to behave like
rich brats. Because they were wealthy, these inheritors of family fortunes had
“dispositions to pleasure” that fell under far fewer restrictions than what the
regular working-class bloke could expect. These privileged pals provided poor Charles
both “an incentive and an apology” to enact his own “irregularities” in their
company.
The narrator
says that if the “recording angel of the law” kept a ledger of misdeeds for
every man and woman, when it came to these wealthy young nobles the angel
“dropped a tear upon the word and blotted it out forever!” It seems that the sons of unimaginable wealth
and power can get away with shit that would bankrupt the rest of us.
In the
embrace of these protected companions, Charles spiraled into a whirlpool of
“reckless profligacy … a rapid career of vice.” But human bodies have their
limits, and even the best of livers is bound to give way after too much booze
and too little sleep. Fever, coma, and death would mean the end of Charles’
nightly revels. The only son of what was once “a very numerous family” dies
abed at home, his wealthy friends nowhere to be found among the peasant women
keeping vigil.[ii]
Of course,
one might ask about justice in a world where the “less-than-rich” fellow gets
sick while his “more-than-rich” buddies apparently go unscathed healthwise. The
rich stay healthy while the sick stay poor, right? (And the Grammy for best
lyric switch goes to … U2.)
In the
pre-dawn hours of his 25th birthday, Charles died. The women of the
vigil settled into quietude while Mother Ann MacCarthy prayed fervently in the
adjoining room for the salvation of her only son. Soon enough her devotions
were “disturbed by an unusual noise” coming from the mourners gathered around
the body. “First there was a low murmur, then all was silent … and then a loud
cry of terror burst from all.”
The
mourners fled in a panicked scramble when the dead man came back to life. Struggling
through the fleeing vigil-keepers, Mrs. MacCarthy came to her son’s room to
find Charles sitting up on the bed, “looking vacantly around, like one risen
from the grave.” Indeed, the dim candlelight gave “an unearthy horror to his
whole aspect.”
“Speak!”
the frightened mother says to her son. “Are you alive?”
Yes, he
was alive.
With as
much voice as his parched throat would allow, Charles eagerly recounts an encounter
with God. Like most of us who might rush to write down the details of a dream
before it is erased by waking consciousness, Charles rushes out his story of
meeting God “while the excitement of returning life is upon me.”
The young
man rasps out to his mother the experience of finding himself being judged, of standing
before God on the verge of receiving the Divine thumbs down and getting shipped
off to an eternity of punishment.
Mere
moments before being tossed through the trapdoor to Hell, however, Charles catches
the eye of the saintly protector of the MacCarthy clan. He begs the Holy patron
to intercede on his behalf for a second chance to prove his spiritual worth. The
patron saint goes into action, throwing himself at the feet of God and pleading
to give Charles another opportunity to prove his himself.
God concedes,
and gives Charles three more years of life for a do-over, an opportunity for repentance
and redemption. At the end of three full years, on his 27th
birthday, Charles would die again and once more stand before God for another
accounting of his life.
Here is
where the story becomes most eye catching.
If this
were a non-fictional account, Charle’s story might be described as what we
today call a “Near Death Experience,” an event that modern science typically dismisses
as the neuronal firings of a dying brain.
Even
Charles’ mother is reluctant to indulge him: “His mother, though … somewhat
disposed to give credit to supernatural visitations, yet hesitated whether or
not she should believe” what her son was telling her. Her tendency was to think
the young man was “still under the influence of delirium.”
Charles
recognizes her doubt: “Do not stare incredulously on me,” he tells her. “I saw
— I remember. It is fixed here; printed on my brain in characters indelible;
but it passeth human language. What I can describe I will.”
Charles
remains convinced of the reality of the otherworldly occurrence, so much so
that long after awakening at his own wake, he “persisted in his account of the
vision, as he had first related it.”
Over time,
however, he grows reluctant to speak with others about the Courtroom of God.
Why is
that?
Perhaps
the people around him started to view his story too lightly, turning it into
something of a party anecdote bandied about for the entertainment of newcomers?
Charles
eventually “evaded every endeavor to draw from him a distinct opinion on the
subject of the supposed prediction” of his impending expiration date, “but
among his own family it was well known that he still firmly believed it.”
It didn’t
help that after his return from the dead Charles looked better than ever,
healthier and hardier than before. How could someone so filled with vitality die
on his 27th birthday?
A Game
Changer
And returning now to the opening observation of this contemplation, it is worth
noting how the experience affected Charles’ personality and guided his subsequent
interactions with his former drinking buddies. The narrator states clearly that
Charles’ otherworldly experience “had an obvious and decided influence on his
habits and conduct.”
Notably, Charles
did not “altogether abandon the society of his former associates, for his
temper was not soured by his reformation.” And while he still spent time with
them, from then on he “never joined in their excesses.”
Did he try
to persuade his friends away from carousing?
Sure.
Charles “often endeavored to reclaim them,” but apparently never obnoxiously
so. He did not display the arrogant conviction of the newly convicted and
converted. His “pious exertions” were limited to Charles being “religious
without ostentation, and temperate without austerity.” His life during his
three-year probation proved that “vice may be exchanged for virtue, without the
loss of respectability, popularity, or happiness.”
There were
moments of morosity and fear, of course. As he drew closer to his 27th
birthday, Charles increasingly betrayed moments of somber worry, “a seriousness
and abstractedness of demeanor” that “grew upon him” with every passing day.
His friends rallied to distract him from these emotional shadows, and “for the
most part his manner exhibited the same animation and cheerfulness for which he
had always been remarkable.”
Kudos to
Charles for still knowing how to live after learning what it is to die. He continued
his social engagements, met with his friends, maintained his responsibilities,
and strove to do good for the world around him while enhancing his relationship
with the Church.
Charles did
not descend into the Zone of Arrogance by becoming a fundamentalist or a
crusading zealot.
Sure, he
sometimes grew gloomy, but that’s OK. It is to be expected that his awareness
of time’s passing combined with a newfound appreciation of being alive would
combine toward moments of melancholy. And surely those times within the shadow
of sadness were worsened by his observation that his friends, people he
genuinely cared for, did not share with him such an appreciation for the
brevity and beauty of being alive.
Turning
this contemplation inward, I recall my own encounter with a potentially
life-threatening illness. The experience changed me physically,
psychologically, and spiritually. After any such an illness, even with the
life-saving gift of medical intervention, one ought naturally to achieve an
appreciation of how short our human lives really are. No longer can we blindly
assume a lifespan of nine decades or more, nor even seven. We have known real
danger, and understand that life can escape us far more easily than we want it
to.
Every
moment of being alive is precious.
Sadly, few
are willing to recognize this. Reminders of our natural mortality makes them
uncomfortable. If ever I spoke to my closest friend about the brevity of our
days on earth and the rapidly decreasing number of days before our own dying, I
would find myself dismissed with a friendly — but nervous — pat on the shoulder
and the inevitable “there there, don’t talk like that” response.
Friends
mean well, bless them.
Of course,
given the terror that goes with it, I doubt anybody would wish upon their loved
ones the experience of an alarming medical prognosis as a way of expanding
anyone’s appreciation for life. Even many years after recovery, an undercurrent
of anxiety can on occasion prevent the attainment of restful slumber.
Better
that we learn to appreciate the value of being alive through the study of
Philosophy, or the reading of fiction, of stories like this one about Charles
MacCarthy, whose temporary resurrection allowed him three full years of knowing
exactly how dear is each breath, each morsel of food, each word of greeting,
and each note of birdsong.
Yes, life is
wonderful.
There
there.
The Banshee After All
A couple of days before his 27th birthday, Charles is felled by a
stray bullet, a victim of the gunshot intended not for him but for his friend
James Ryan whose wedding he was attending. The pistol had been fired by a
former lover of Ryan who never recovered from having been set aside for the
woman who would soon become Mrs. Ryan. The jilted lady had descended into a
“moody, melancholy state” for months after the separation. She was seeking a
terrible revenge against “the destroyer of her innocence and happiness.”
She ended
up killing Charles, instead.
Though she
had inflicted only a minor injury upon Charles, the gunshot eventually brought
the robust young man down through infection. As he lay on his deathbed the
woman who shot him tried desperately to gain admittance into his room, but her
path was blocked by those who guarded the MacCarthy home. Struggling against
her captors, she pleaded for Charles to forgive her. In almost the same breath
she would deny responsibility, crying aloud: “James Ryan, ‘twas you killed him,
and not I …”.
Did
Charles hear her plea? If he had heard her, would he have had anything to
forgive her for, seeing her rather as a vehicle of Divine will?
From his
deathbed Charles spoke “with courage and confidence” of his impending
departure. He displayed a calm, “even
cheerful” resignation to his fate, and told his mother that he “wished to
devote the last hours of his existence to uninterrupted prayer and meditation.”
When the
sun shining upon his 27th birthday gave way to the dark of evening,
Charles’ soul moved on “to render its last account to its Creator.”
But what
about the titular banshee attached to the MacCarthy family?
What
follows in the second half of this story is actually quite spellbinding, specifically
the portrayal of a banshee that seems to make a special contribution to the way
we (those of us who are basically unfamiliar with Irish folklore and mythology)
think of the iconic banshee.
If you
want to read about the unique features of the titular fairy figure in “The
Banshee of the MacCarthys,” you’ll find the second part of this interrogation
at the Grandfather Hu Reviews site, specifically the “What
about the Banshee?” post.
Graphic:
Seated
Youth by 1917 Wilhelm Lehmbruck
Open Access, National Gallery of Art
[i] The second half of this tale is
delivered in a series of letters written by Charles’ mother and her best friend
who is also a distant cousin of Charles.
[ii] Who exactly were the
vigil-keepers? The narrator notes that a crowd had gathered outside the
MacCarthy home on the day of the doctor’s arrival, when his verdict would be
that the ailing, comatose young man would not likely recover. Gathering on the
front lawn, crowding around the door, and peeking into the windows are the
“tenants, fosterers, and poor relations of the family.” Among them are “others
attracted by affection, or by that interest which partakes of curiosity, but is
something more, and which collects the lower ranks round a house where a human
being is in his passage to another world.” When the doctor’s verdict was
delivered, the numerous women “uttered a shrill cry, which having been
sustained for about half a minute, fell suddenly into a full, loud, continued,
and discordant but plaintive wailing.” Among their voices was the “deep sounds
of a man’s voice, sometimes in deep sobs, sometimes in more distinct
exclamations of sorrow.” This was the wailing of Charles’ foster brother, his
personal servant.
No comments:
Post a Comment