"The White Cat of Drumgunnoil" by Joseph Sheridan le Fanu

"The White Cat of Drumgunnoil" by Joseph Sheridan le Fanu  (1870, 5 pages)

March 1 to March 31

Day One

Dublin

1814 to 1873

Event Resources-Links to Irish short stories- 1813 to 2013

Please consider joining us for the event.  All you need to do is complete a post on any Irish Short Story or related matter and let me know about it.  I will publicize your post and keep a master list. Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions. 

Carmilla has made a non-negotiable demand that there be frequent posts for ISSW3 on  her creator, one of  the greatest writer of Gothic works of all time, the Dublin born Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu.   I have posted on a number of his short stories.  Based on my limited reading, I would suggest you start with his very powerful story which is directly related to the tragic events of the famines, "The Child Stolen by Fairies".   From there I would suggest you proceed to Carmilla, in which the world's first lesbian vampire is turned out on the world.  (Carmilla says she is not totally averse to gentlemen callers.)

"Now, what was it, in so simple an incident, that agitated my father, my mother, myself, and finally, every member of this rustic household, with a terrible foreboding? It was this that we, one and all, believed that my father had received, in thus encountering the white cat, a warning of his approaching death."

"The White Cat of Drumgunnoil" deals directly with themes from Irish folklore, that of the banshee, a creature which takes animal form and attaches itself to a family as a harbinger of a death in the family.  Banshees often form very enduring attachments, sometimes lasting centuries, with a particular family. Needless to say their appearance is not welcome and their sighting is an occasion for great fear and horror as people wonder who the banshee has come about.

"I say let us change this to
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu Month"
Carmilla

This story is set in the Irish country side which Le Fanu describes beautifully.  He tells us how the banshee first seems to have attached itself to the family.   Like many 19th century short stories, in Ireland and elsewhere, the tale is narrated as if it were a person telling a story to someone he knows.   A man, the story starts when he is young but now he is very old (old people are often revered in the short stories of Ireland from the 19th century, maybe because of the  famines they were rare).  He tells of the day he saw a terribly evil looking white cat as he was out for a ramble.   There is an interesting story about an avaricious uncle that had promised marriage to a beautiful woman then married a rich woman instead.  Le Fanu is a master at building an atmosphere of fear and we know death will soon arrive.  It takes the family a while to realize the white cat (banshees are shift changers) has decided to become their family banshee.  This a very powerful story that will make you look twice at your cat, especially if they are white!

Le Fanu does a very good job of creating for us the speech patterns of the people in the story:

“Whisht, will yez?” said the leader, peremptorily, “I can’t hear my own ears wid the noise ye’re makin’, an’ which iv yez let the cat in here, an’ whose cat is it?” she asked, peering suspiciously at a white cat that was sitting on the breast of the corpse.

“Put it away, will yez?” she resumed, with horror at the profanation. “Many a corpse as I sthretched and crossed in the bed, the likes o’ that I never seen yet. The man o’ the house, wid a brute baste like that mounted on him, likee a phooka, Lord forgi’ me for namin’ the like in this room. Dhrive it away, some o’ yez! out o’ that, this minute, I tell ye.”

You can see the clairity and beauty of the prose of Le Fanu in these lines:

"The white cat was sitting in its old place, on the dead man’s breast, but this time it crept quietly down the side of the bed, and disappeared under it, the sheet which was spread like a coverlet, and hung down nearly to the floor, concealing it from view.

Praying, crossing themselves, and not forgetting a sprinkling of holy water, they peeped, and finally searched, poking spades, “wattles,” pitchforks and such implements under the bed. But the cat was not to be found, and they concluded that it had made its escape among their feet as they stood near the threshold. So they secured the door carefully, with hasp and padlock.

But when the door was opened next morning they found the white cat sitting, as if it had never been disturbed, upon the breast of the dead man."

Biographical note

Novelist, son of a Dean of the Episcopal Church of Ireland, and grand-nephew of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and became a contributor and ultimately proprietor of the Dublin University Magazine, in which many of his novels made their first appearance. Called to the Bar in 1839, he did not practice  and was first brought into notice by two ballads, Phaudrig Croohoore and Shamus O’Brien, which had extraordinary popularity. His novels, of which he wrote 12, include The Cock and Anchor [1845], Torlough O’Brien[1847], The House by the Churchyard [1863], Uncle Silas (perhaps the most popular) [1864], The Tenants of Malory [1867], In a Glass Darkly [1872], and Willing to Die.

"Not sure if I am crazy for this story"
Ruprecht

Le Fanu wrote a lot of short stories.  I hope to read all of them..  I hope also to read his Uncle Silas and The House by the Churchyard.

You can read or download this story and lots of other works by Le Fanu at the excellent webpage eBooks@Adelaide maintained by the Library of the University of Adelaide.  

If you have a favorite Irish horror or ghost story, why not do a post on it?

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