Emily Lawless' Grey Washer
One of the most striking moments in Emily Lawless' With Essex in Ireland (1890) comes when the narrator, Henry Harvey, spots an eerie supernatural figure known as the Grey Washer by the Ford:
And lo! that Accursed Crone was still there, only erect now, and standing upon the further brink of the river. And it seemed to me that her stature had grown to be greater than is the stature of any mere mortal woman, so that despite the murkiness of the air I could plainly discern her lineaments, and could see the foul and livid colour of her cheeks, and mark her thin and wrinkled chaps, which seemed to be moving up and down with a deadly and a mocking smile as she looked after us. And in one hand she held something covered with a cloth, the shape of which, so far as I could discern it, appeared to be that of a human head, newly severed from the trunk, and dripping at the neck with blood, which as she held it aloft, fell down drop by drop into the river running below. Nor was this, [though enough] all, nor the worst, no, nor the half even of what I saw, for as God is my witness, and as I hope, being a sinful man, to be saved by His grace at the last day, so I do here solemnly protest and declare that this gory head which she held thus aloft in her hands appeared to me as I gazed at it to be the very image and presentment of my dear Lord the Earl's own head, only that the cheeks were of a ghastly hue, like those of a man new dead, and that the eyes of it seemed to be tight shut, and all sunk, hollow, and half hidden in the head! (251-52)
Now, Mr. Harvey tells us that his authority for the legend of the "Grey Washer"is one "Mr. Delahide in Wexford" (247). But where did Mr. Delahide get it? As Gertrude Schoepperle points out in an article about "Fiona MacLeod," the Washer legend originates "before the tenth century," although she is usually washing the warrior's equipment instead of his head.1 Schoepperle further notes that in the traditional legend, there is "dialogue between her and the man who is to die" (63). A slightly different version of the legend is the Bean Nigheachain/Bean Nighidh of the Scottish Highlands; although folklorist R. C. MacLagan says that "she is credited, when seen, with foretelling some fatality," he also notes that some interviewees said she was of a "friendly disposition," while yet others argued that "though hurt follows her appearance, it is not her doing."2 However, given the decapitated head, Lawless' immediate source may have been Sir Samuel Ferguson's Congal: A Poem in Five Books (1872):
"I am the Washer of the Ford," she answered; "and my race
"Is of the Tuath de Danaan line of Magi; and my place
"For toil is in the running streams of Erin; and my cave
"For sleep is in the middle of the shell-heaped Cairn of Maev,
"High up on haunted Knocknarea; and this fine carnage-heap
"Before me, and these silken vests and mantles which I steep
"Thus in the running water, are the severed heads and hands
"And spear-torn scarfs and tunics of these gay-dressed, gallant bands
"Whom thou, oh Congal, leadest to death. And this," the Fury said,
Uplifting by the clotted locks what seemed a dead man's head,
"Is thine own head, oh Congal." (68)
Lawless reworks the legend in one important way: in her novel, Essex refuses to stop to talk to the Washer, and thus misses the prophecy of his own death. In fact, there's no conversation with Lawless' Grey Washer at all--which, given the total inability of the English in this novel to make heads or tails of Ireland, makes perfect sense. Henry Harvey, who receives the full brunt of the vision, is no hero; Essex, the novel's purported hero, is no hero either--or, at least, no hero in the mode of Celtic legend. After all, the Washer is prophesying not Essex's death in battle, but his execution after a failed rebellion. In effect, the characters wind up in an epic moment, only for it to misfire completely. (Such misfires characterize the entire novel, as virtually no genre convention manages to work as advertised.) Moreover, this vision transforms Harvey into a Cassandra figure, as he cannot communicate his mysterious knowledge to Essex, and its traumatic psychological effect ultimately reduces the narrative to a complete shambles.
(It seems rather ironic, incidentally, that Brewer cited Lawless' version as an authority in his Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.)
1 Gertrude Schoepperle, "The Washer of the Ford," The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 18 (1919): 61. Internet Archive.
2 R. C. MacLagan, "The 'Keener' in the Scottish Highlands and Islands," Folklore 25.1 (1914): 87, 88. JSTOR.