A Literary Analysis of Two of Fitz-James O’Brien’s Gothic Poems: ‘The Ghosts’ and ‘The Demon of the Gibbet’
- Michael Kellermeyer
- 3 hours ago
- 5 min read
Fitz-James O’Brien occupies a distinctive, if often overlooked, place in nineteenth-century Gothic literature, bridging the spectral introspection of American dark romantics with the folkloric terrors of his Irish heritage. Best known for his macabre short fiction, O’Brien was equally adept as a poet, crafting verse that mingles psychological unease with supernatural spectacle. His Gothic imagination thrives in liminal spaces—between life and death, dream and waking, the material and the immaterial—where characters confront forces that expose their deepest vulnerabilities.
In poems such as “The Demon of the Gibbet” (1856) and “The Ghosts” (1859), O’Brien draws upon the European ballad tradition, metaphysical reflection, and the era’s growing fascination with death’s metaphoric resonance. These works showcase two complementary facets of his dark artistry: the folkloric Gothic, steeped in Celtic legend and the uncanny violence of the supernatural world, and the psychological Gothic, where the terror arises from inward dissolution and existential dread.
Taken together, they position O’Brien as a transitional Gothic poet whose work anticipates later developments in horror and symbolist verse, revealing a writer preoccupied with the porous boundaries that separate the living from the dead.
The Demon of the Gibbet
or, What Befell
{1856}
No anthology of Fitz-James O’Brien would be complete without this, one of his most famous pieces of writing – his most widely anthologized poem. The tale told here is an ancient legend – that of the Demon Lover. Sometimes the evil spirit is a ghost, a troll, a gnome, a fairy, and elf, a demon, or a zombie, but invariably it arrives to kidnap a living person to transport them to the realm of the supernatural. Featured prominently in folk ballads, the victims are often children, beautiful virgins, espoused women (kidnapped on their wedding day), and troubled dreamers. Often the victim has been aware of the eminent abduction, informed by dreams or premonitions. On other occasions the abduction is capricious and startling. The event often occurs on horseback or in a carriage where the victim is chased, later disappearing or expiring. The moral is one of death’s selfish greed – the victims being universally innocent and young, although in this case there are hints that the couple are en route to a scandalous elopement, and the demon might then be read as the manifestation of unchecked lust: violent, selfish, and destructive. It can often be seen as a meditation on the cruelty of death and the vulnerability of innocence.
II.
“The Demon of the Gibbet” is undoubtedly inspired by the folklore of Ireland and Great Britain, and specifically the folk songs which revolve around the theme of the Demon Lover. The Germans established the trope as a poetic topic – most famously by Gottfried Augustus Bürger in his influential masterpiece, “Lenore,” and J. W. von Goethe in his world-famous “The Erlking” – a poem adapted in a gloomy art song by Schubert. Variations are manifold, but some are outstanding. It then became best explored as a theme in English-language short fiction: classic examples include Edith Nesbit’s “John Charrington’s Wedding” and “Man-Size in Marble,” E. F. Benson’s “The Face,” Charles Dickens’ “To Be Read at Dusk,” and Rhoda Broughton’s “The Man with the Nose.” Most notably, however, is the story of O’Brien’s countryman, J. Sheridan Le Fanu: “Schalken the Painter,” which uses the motif of wine and nourishment being used to revitalize those trapped in the spirit world. For a more developed take on this tale read Le Fanu’s masterpiece.
There was no west, there was no east,
No star abroad for eyes to see;
And Norman spurred his jaded beast
Hard by the terrible gallows-tree.
"O, Norman, haste across this waste[1],—
For something seems to follow me!"
"Cheer up, dear Maud, for, thanked be God,
We nigh[2] have passed the gallows tree!"
He kissed her lip: then—spur and whip!
And fast they fled across the lea[3].
But vain the heel, the rowel[4] steel,—
For something leaped from the gallows-tree!
"Give me your cloak, your knightly cloak,
That wrapped you oft beyond the sea!
The wind is bold, my bones are old,
And I am cold on the gallows-tree!"
"O holy God! O dearest Maud,
Quick, quick, some prayers—the best that be!
A bony hand my neck has spanned,
And tears my knightly cloak from me!"
"Give me your wine,—the red, red wine,
That in a flask hangs by your knee!
Ten summers burst on me accurst[5],
And I am athirst on the gallows-tree!"
"O Maud, my life, my loving wife!
Have you no prayer to set us free?
My belt unclasps,—a demon grasps,
And drags my wine-flask from my knee!"
"Give me your bride, your bonnie bride,
That left her nest with you to flee!
O she hath flown to be my own,
For I'm alone on the gallows-tree!"
"Cling closer, Maud, and trust in God!
Cling close!—Ah, heaven, she slips from me!"
A prayer, a groan, and he alone
Rode on that night from the gallows-tree.
The Ghosts
{1859}
Curt but haunting, O’Brien’s “The Ghosts” is a profound little verse that hums with the same existential meditations as Hawthorne (“The Ocean”), Poe (“Annabel Lee,” “Ulalume”), Whitman (“O Captain! My Captain!”), and Dickinson (“Because I could not stop for death,” “I heard a Fly buzz — when I died,” etc., etc.). The lines “I have no fear of ye! I seem to share / Your dim vitality” are particularly akin to Dickinson’s lovely, rolling cadence. The content broods over the inevitability of death, and the ways that the dead are in some ways more alive than some of the living. The ghosts which wreath about the speaker’s bed – possibly the memories of the departed, haunting thoughts of past episodes in his life – mock his draining life and call into question who, exactly, is more alive (that is, more in touch with the philosophical realities of life). As the man dies (or imagines himself dying), he surrenders himself into the murky indistinctness of the ghosts, abandoning himself to a worldview which resists clear definitions of good and evil, life and death. In the end, he sighs, it is all mist, all a floating fog of morphing shadows and refracted light. At this point in his life, O’Brien was particularly obsessed with doom and destiny, fixating on an unspoken fate – vague, discomforting, and aloof, which nevertheless looms out of the future and makes its arrival a certainty. Reality was beginning to feel vague to him in 1859, and the confident black-and-white of his early romanticism was congealing into an indistinct, marbled grey: less certain, more speculative, more uneasy. “The Ghosts” uses a supernatural metaphor to ponder the shifting, windblown vapors of life, idealism, and mortality.
Pale shapes advancing from the mid-night air,
Beckoning with misty finger round my bed,
Bending your faded faces o’er my head,
I have no fear of ye! I seem to share
Your dim vitality – mine’s well-nigh fled.
I feel the human outlines melt away ;
These thin, gray hands that lie on the damp sheet
Are almost vapory enough to meet
Yours in the grasp of fellowship. My hair
Seems turning into cloud. The quickened[6] clay
That walls me in is cracking, and I strive
Towards ye through the breach. Am I alive?
Or are ye dead? All’s vague – a wide gray sea.
Hark! The cock crows! Now, spirits, welcome me!
[1] Wilderness, desolate countryside
[2] Nearly, almost
[3] Grassland, fields, open countryside
[4] The round, spiky wheel of a spur that actually “spurs” the horse
[5] That is, he has been dead – and powerfully thirsty – for ten years
[6] “Quickened clay” is an older poetic or biblical-style phrase. It means clay that has been given life — in other words, living flesh formed out of earth