The Woman in White
from The Irish Times: 1888
When most are asked: “what is the most terrifying thing that one can confront on one our dark country roads in the early hours of light?” they’ll probably come back at you with some sort phantom or ghoul conjured from their own nightmares ––I, on the other hand, come back at them with a true story about the most terrifying thing my own good friend Pat McGill confronted on the dark road between Bodenstown and Clane in the early hours of a Winter’s morning in 1872, and it was ––a premonition of his own early death.
You see ––the road there, between Bodenstown and Clane, is covered over by a canopy atop tall trees and the road itself snakes it way down to the banks of the Liffey like a dark tunnel bored through some Alpine mountain pass ––only in this case it’s constructed out of this arboured mass of familiar vegetation, which is made somehow uncanny by their resemblance to a spectral guard of honour eyeing this road’s users with a harsh suspicion and deep seated contempt.
It was within this particular menacing burrow, given added chime by the leafy sway of its trees plucked to chiming as they were by a cantankerous wind, that my auld pal Pat McGill was making his way back from Sallins Railway Station in the early hours, bringing a cart load of flour he had collected there for the morning bake of Brennan’s over there on Main Street.
He was making good time as well, and was so used to every serpentine bend of this road that he swears he could steer his horse and cart along it blindfolded ––not that he needed to test this theory mind, as most mornings the light makes such a slim impression upon the pounded turf there that he may as well have been blindfolded every single morning that he made his similar deliveries.
Well now ––upon coming to the halfway point, along that dark road there, auld McGill swears he could see the form of a woman, in a long white dress, walking slowly before the grassy verge that divides the road from the long the stone wall that runs all the way to the banks of the Liffey at the road’s end.
And ––he thought it unusual to see anyone out and about pre-dawn on such a Winter’s morn, let alone some lady without anything resembling a coat upon her slim frame ––see, McGill says there was a strong frost in the night in which this current event took place and the thoughts anyone bearing their extremities to the shock of those barbs, especially with nothing more than a thin vail of cotton between them and aul’Jack’s daggers, well ––confounded his reason.
So ––McGill decided that upon approaching the woman he’d ask her if he could take her to somewhere indoors at Clane, or at very least, somewhere between where she could find a way in out of that pressing cold before she finds her death on that very roadside there.
To this end ––he giddied-up his gee-gee and made a bee line for what would be his good-deed-of-the-day ––in the hope, I venture to add, that the Good Lord Himself would look pleasantly upon his actions and reciprocate with His own Good Grace at a time when McGill had a few jars on him and in consequence of senses being taken by an inebriated state would allow the Devil to be at his shoulder.
So ––he approached your-one at a fair gallop and as he got closer to herself he pulled up his steed, cart following in the twin intention ––as the horse and cart, you see, would have found themselves so yoked to this common cause ––he finished his rush at a halt beside this mysterious woman in white.
So ––it seemed to him, on occasion of his errant hiatus, that her nibs here, decked out as she was all in white, seemed to ignore his presence and good intentions altogether ––she never even reacted one bit, he said, to the noise of his horse and cart pulling up beside her ––nor did she, in that moment anyhow, turn around in aural curiosity to find out the origin of this noisy clatter of hoofs which McGill said had made a fierce racket upon frost frozen turf ––no, not a bit of it. Instead she walked on as indifferent to his concerns as she had been when he first clapped eyes on her, when, that is, he had first turned into the Blackhall section of that shady road to Clane there ––and now, because he was now close to her, he could make out the almost luminous glow of her paler than pale white skin and the blackness of her hair, which he said was blacker than the blackest black you’d see a raven’s plumage to be.
So ––McGill decided to keep pace with her awhile and was about to ask what it was that she was doing out on such a frightfully cold morning such as this ––when she turned around to stare at him with eyes shining brighter than the full moon on a starry Winter’s night.
Now ––I don’t know about you, but if that was me receiving such a sight to my senses I know my own nerves would have such a reaction that I’d have vaulted out of my seat with such rapidity that I’d have flayed myself with the swiftness of it all and left the whole of skin folded 9 yards below me own meaty carcass. McGill ––on the other hand, obviously made of a firmer constitution, remained clenched to his running board as though such a sight were a daily occurrence.
“Pat McGill?” she asked, in a voiced he described as soft and wistful ––as though the Autumn wind itself had learned to play the harp and was now lulling one into a dreamy stupor by the chiming pleasantness of it all.
“I am.” he answered, unperturbed by the strangeness of his present interlocutor.
“And you wish to know your fate?” she asked.
Now ––McGill says he had no such curiosity at any time, certainly none about his fate ––considering, as he did, all foretelling of this kind to be knowledge his wits could best do without, as he saw all such prognostication as most likely to lead him filling his days with a crippling sense of foreboding such that it’d be the tether that’d fixed him firmly to unhappiness ––as he could not imagine a way to overcome this yoke of imminent dark tidings ––so he surprised himself, on the night in question, when he replied: “Yes, yes ––indeed I do.”
“Well,” she said, “you’ll die by the draw of water.” and with that she disappeared.
Now ––you’re probably incredulous about how a woman with moon bright eyes could accurately foretell the death of a man, who was only offering her a lift to a place of warmth in out of the cold on a Winter’s morning, but there are stories of some such fate-tellers in white all about Kildare for millennia before this one approached auld McGill here ––some call her a Banshee, others a Púca in the form of a woman and others still call her ‘One of the Fair People’ ––personally I don’t know what manner of creature that poor old McGill saw that morning on the road between Bodenstown and Clane ––all I know is this: that as soon as he heard his fate auld Pat McGill seemed to withdraw himself into a great worry about his fate ––he avoided all water, even going so far as to never cross the Liffey again after that fateful morning ––however, and you can ask anyone that knew the man themselves that this is true, poor old McGill was found drowned on his property not one year to the day later ––and not a sinner amongst us knows how it was that he came to be drowned without a lick of surface water anywhere to be found on his property then or since.
So ––when you ask me: “what is the most terrifying thing that one can confront, on one our dark country roads, in the early hours of light?” I always answer: “a woman in white, with eyes as bright as the shining moon ––who’ll tell the fate you’ll inevitably follow as assuredly as the waters of Liffey course their slow flowing way to the embrace of the sea.”
