The Wicklow Weird Winged Thing

We don’t get a lot of winged weirdies in Ireland. So I was almost giddy when I came across the following story, which appeared in The Wicklow People of 14 July 1900 [originally published in Truth magazine – date unknown].

Truth Says – A lady, who says that she has been a regular of Truth for many years, reports to me a most mysterious occurrence at Dublin of which she was recently an eye witness, and which she felt it her duty to reveal:

On a Sunday evening, at about twenty minutes to six o’clock, witness was sitting in a window overlooking a broad and much frequented thoroughfare. The evening was beautifully calm, with a light silvery haze in the air, and a few fleecy clouds in the sky, when she observed far up in the sky a black spot. Its shape was irregular, and it remained motionless. The writer fixed her eyes on it, and never removed them for fully five and twenty minutes, when to her surprise [She must have been surprised – Ed Truth] there swooped down from out of the black spot an immense Thing, with wings spread, which seemed about 25 feet from tip to tip. Flapping these wings slowly, it moved in a northerly direction over the city, and was lost to sight. In the meantime the black spot wholly disappeared.

Weeks passed, and although the writer often watched for the strange visitant she saw nothing more. On the evening of last Trinity Sunday, however, when sitting in the same window, at precisely the same hour as before there was the same black spot in the same place in the sky, motionless. The writer again fixed her eyes on it for about the same space of time as before, when down came the enormous Thing as before, out of the Spot. It sailed away slowly, this time in the direction of Bray, County Wicklow.

NB – The wings were of a creamy colour, no feathers were visible, nor did there appear any thing like a body with them.

I think I may say, without boasting, this is one of the most remarkable experiences of this kind ever reported to the editor of a newspaper, unless in the Sea Serpent season. When I first read it I felt for the moment like the poet in Mr Gilbert’s ballad, who

Couldn’t help thinking

The man had been drinking

But on looking back, and seeing that the lady had been a regular reader of Truth for many years, I at once dismissed this theory. That being so and my correspondent having enclosed her name “as a guarantee of good faith,” the question at once arises whether the “strange visitant” is of a natural or supernatural character. It may be a portent connected with the war in South Africa or the Boxer outbreak. It may have something to do with the re-union of the Irish Party, or the Crisis in the Church. Which it may be I leave to wiser heads than mine to explain, though I cannot help remarking that the appearance of the phenomenon on Trinity Sunday is significant. At the same time, should anyone in the neighbourhood of Bray, Co. Wicklow, notice a pair of featherless wings flapping about overhead without a body, my advice is “Do not hesitate to shoot.”

My giddiness was short lived, however. It seems that, shortly after the original article appeared, a “Dublin contemporary” wrote to the magazine with his – annoyingly plausible – theory.

My readers will doubtless have fresh in their memories the strange experience of the Dublin lady, who on a recent Sunday afternoon beheld in the sky a mysterious Thing, consisting of a pair of wings without a body, which evolved itself out of a Black Spot in the firmament, and, swooping over the city, flapped off on its featherless pinions in the direction of Bray, Co Wicklow. A Dublin contemporary furnishes a very rationalistic explanation of the phenomena. It seems that on several Sunday afternoons someone has been flying a big kite over Dublin. As the kite attained a great altitude, it presented the appearance of a black spot, motionless in the sky, and when it was hauled down it might have assumed, to an imaginative eye, the appearance of a winged Thing, flapping away in the distance. For the sake of the lady who had the vision, I trust that this may be the correct interpretation. Things might easily have been worse.

As always, if anyone can add to this story, or has other Irish winged weirdie stories to share, please get in touch.

Sources:

The Wicklow People, 14 July 1900

The Wrexham Advertiser, 21 July 1900