Tea at Trianon: Lord Rossmore's Banshee

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Lord Rossmore's Banshee

From The Inn at the End of the World:

6 August is the feast of the Holy Transfiguration of Our Lord on Mount Tabor.

It's also the 212th anniversary of the death in 1801 of Robert Cuninghame, 1st Baron Rossmore, soldier and Irish politician. He fought at Culloden, but alas, on the wrong side. Well, morally the wrong side. For purposes of personal advancement, very much on the correct side. He died quite a wealthy man, a peer, and commander-in-chief of the military forces in Ireland.

And I'm telling you this, because. . .?

His death involved one of the great banshee stories in Irish lore. The following is from Personal Sketches of his Own Time by Sir Jonah Barrington, Member of the Irish Parliament, Judge of the High Court of Admiralty of Ireland. In two volumes. 1871. (Read more.)