BAN-7 · The Singer at the Howe & Hound

BAN-7 The Singer at the Howe & Hound Banshee, of the keening sort — Irish descent, lately of the northern moors

Woodcut portrait: the Singer, mid-song, the house asleep behind her — Her likeness, taken mid-song by the Parish engraver, who did not stay for the end of the song.

Name: She gives none. The register records her as “the Singer at the Howe & Hound.”
Descent: Of the old families of Ireland, who followed their households across the water in the hungry years. Where the family goes, she goes; when the family ends, she sings it out.
Present Trade: Keeps no fixed abode. Sings in taverns for coin, and settles debts of a kind no bailiff will touch. The dying she attends without invitation; the living hire her at their peril.
Note on her Gift: She does not foretell. She is no seer. She knows a death only when it is already at the door — and then she is merely the first to say so aloud. the parish of ———— learned the distinction too late.

Record of Incidents

On the night the North Road lost its head, she was heard at the Howe & Hound, and the room slept, and a sack left with her that did not leave with its owners. See the picture, “A Matched Set”.

Here unfolds the sworn deposition of Wilf Ackroyd, potman at the Howe & Hound, taken before the Clerk.

“I poured for the two gentlemen at the corner. Then she sang the one bar, and I woke with the morning and the cups still full. I have not poured a late hour since. A man should know when a house wants closing.”

Entered in the Register the 14th day of October, 17the last figure is eaten away. Examined & found true — Parish Clerk