The Celtic Twilight

by William Butler Yeats

Overview

Paddy Flynn, a little, youthful elderly guy, told me many of the stories in this book. He resided in Ballisodare, County Sligo, in a leaky, one-room hut.No matter what one questions, one never doubts the faeries because "they stand to reason," as a man with an Indian mohawk tattoo on his bicep puts it. Even in the rural areas of the west, there are some sceptics.Minorities do not exist in the tiny towns and villages. Every man is a class unto himself, and every hour presents a fresh obstacle. The illiterate masses don't care about us any more than the elderly horse staring through the local pound's fence does. They claim, "These are ghosts."A "strong farmer," or a "knight of the sheep," as they would have called him in Gaelic times, resides in Cope's mountain. He is a man of might in both words and acts, proud of his lineage from one of the Middle Ages' fiercest clans. According to legend, the Faery People live in a cave beneath damp sea sand, surrounded by black rocks. The girl observed a strong light coming from the cave and several little figures dancing to music while wearing mostly red costumes of various colors.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789357270007
Publisher:	Double 9 Books
Publication date:	04/22/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	414 KB

About the Author

W.B. Yeats (1865-1939) was an Irish poet. Born in Sandymount, Yeats was raised between Sligo, England, and Dublin by John Butler Yeats, a prominent painter, and Susan Mary Pollexfen, the daughter of a wealthy merchant family. He began writing poetry around the age of seventeen, influenced by the Romantics and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, but soon turned to Irish folklore and the mystical writings of William Blake for inspiration. As a young man he joined and founded several occult societies, including the Dublin Hermetic Order and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, participating in séances and rituals as well as acting as a recruiter. While these interests continued throughout Yeats’ life, the poet dedicated much of his middle years to the struggle for Irish independence. In 1904, alongside John Millington Synge, Florence Farr, the Fay brothers, and Annie Horniman, Yeats founded the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, which opened with his play Cathleen ni Houlihan and Lady Gregory’s Spreading the News and remains Ireland’s premier venue for the dramatic arts to this day. Although he was an Irish Nationalist, and despite his work toward establishing a distinctly Irish movement in the arts, Yeats—as is evident in his poem “Easter, 1916”—struggled to identify his idealism with the sectarian violence that emerged with the Easter Rising in 1916. Following the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922, however, Yeats was appointed to the role of Senator and served two terms in the position. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923, and continued to write and publish poetry, philosophical and occult writings, and plays until his death in 1939.