Shane's Castle, once called Edenduffcarrick, stands on the north-east shore of Lough Neagh and was the seat of the O'Neills of Clandeboye. It is one of the few Irish families said to have had their own banshee.
The story is that one of the O'Neill lords, riding out to join a raid, passed a thorn tree sacred to the fairies and found a cow caught in its branches. He cut a branch to free her. The enraged fairies seized his daughter Kathleen and took her down into Lough Neagh. They let her return to tell her father she was safe, but made her promise that whenever misfortune threatened the family she would appear and be heard to wail, and that a room in the castle would always be kept ready for her. She is called Kathleen in some accounts and Maoveen, meaning little Mab, in others.
The household kept the bargain for generations. The legend says that when an Earl O'Neill held a party so large that every room, including hers, was needed, she set the house on fire in anger. The castle burned in 1816 and she was said to have been seen hovering above the flames. The Spirited Isle writer notes that the O'Neills have kept the memory alive and that visitors today report a lone female figure near the tree line or lough edge. An eighteenth century account mentions a separate White Lady who glides along the misty shore before heavy fog.
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