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Masaryk UniversityFaculty of ArtsDepartment of English#and American StudiesEnglish
Language and LiteratureLenka PokornCeltic Elements in Yeatss Early Poetry and
Their Influence on Irish National IdentityMasters Diploma ThesisSupervisor:
Michael Matthew Kaylor, Ph.D.2012I declare that I have worked on this thesis
independently,# using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the
bibliography...Authors signatureI would like to thank my
supervisor Michael Matthew Kaylor, PhD. for his patient guidance and helpful
advice, as well as support and reassurance when I most needed it. I am also
grateful to my classmates and friends Petra
Krlov#############################################################################
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#5##2#.#
#T#h#e#o#r#e#t#i#c#a#l# #P#a#r#t#.#.#.#.#.#.#.#..
7
2.1. Historical
background 7
2.2. Self-fashioning
19
2.2.1. Epic integrity
20
2.2.2. Artificial Self-Fashioning ................................19
2.3.
Role of Art in Ireland 303. Analytical Part......... 42
3.1. Otherworld.. 42
3.1.1. Otherworld as a physical place
45
3.1.2. Otherworld as a realm beyond
senses
54
3.1.3. General motifs in the poetry on the Otherworld64
3.2.
Otherwordly beings
68
3.2.1. Classification and description of the
otherworldly beings
68
3.2.2. Themes of freedom, desire and uneasiness 7 3
3.2.3. Motifs connected the Sidhe 7 8
3.3. Transcendence 8 4
3.3.1. Death 8 4
3.3.2. Kidnappers 8 8
3.3.3. Art and love
9 1
3.3.4. Metaphor of
transcendence of the nation
9 44. Conclusion
9 6Works cited
9 8

1. IntroductionWilliam Butler Yeats certainly ranks among the greatest poets of the
20th century and is closely associated with the Irish Literary Revival, as a poet,
dramatist, and to an extent, as a fiction writer. Being so famous a poet, there is
no doubt that heaps of books have been written on him, viewing his work from many
different angles. What this thesis attempts to do is to offer a little more insight
into his early work, which is paid much less critical attention to, in comparison
with his mature poems he was awarded a Nobel Prize for. The thesis aims to present
a concise picture of young Yeats set against the broader cultural context of the
late 19 th century Ireland and to analyse his contribution into the process of selffashioning of the Irish as a nation. It also explores this process itself two
different strategies are employed when creating a national identity: re-creation of
the ancient epic integrity; and defining the nation in negative terms, as notEnglish. These two strategies overlap in the use of mythology and folklore as a
cornerstone of the self-fashioning process. Yeats, too, leaned on mythology,
ancient legends and folklore, in order to avail of them in his poetry as a vehicle
to lead the nation towards a metaphorical transcendence. The main question posed by
this thesis is: How does he achieve that? To answer this question, the analytical
part discusses the recurring Celtic elements in his work, in particular focuses on
the themes and motifs connected to these elements. Yeats employs certain motifs
repeatedly and the thesis will analyse these very motifs, in order to recognize in
what ways Yeats uses them to influence the Irish national consciousness. These
motifs are, the thesis argues, tied to mythological and folkloric themes, as well
as to topical themes related to life in the 19 th century Ireland, which enables
them to influence the readers on various levels. The late 19 th century was a
transitory period in general the turn of the 20th century was at hand, Modernism
was gradually replacing the Victorian period. However, the prospect of change was
in Ireland even more immediate than elsewhere; Ireland was hoping to transcend its
own colonial limitations and, in the coming century, become a free nation. For
this reason, the theme of transcendence is given special attention in the thesis,
focusing on motifs such as the Otherworld, fairies and the depiction of
transcendence itself, as rooted in folkore and mythology. As the thesis is focused
on Yeatss earlier work, various poems from the period between 18 8 6 and 19 00 are
analysed;# mostly taken from the first three collections of poems: Wanderings of
Oisin and Other Poems (18 8 9 ), Rose (18 9 3) and The Wind Among the Reeds (18 9 9 )#.
Furthermore, the thesis deals with two plays, taking into consideration the
aesthetic beauty of their language and style, they can be analysed alongside the
poetry as long dramatic poems. What is, finally, necessary to say is that this
thesis leans heavily on primary sources, which makes the view of the period and the
ongoing social and cultural processes coloured through Yeatss personal accounts.
However, historic accuracy is not the primary goal; rather the depiction of the
mystical world Yeats created in his poetry. 2. Theoretical Part2.1. Historical
background When speaking about Irish history, many people tend to see it through
works of literature rather than through detached historical analyses. This may be
the result of the strivings of 19 th century nationalist politicians who sought to
create a counter-culture that would contrast with the existing Unionist elite, by
producing mass romantic literature (The Oxford Companion to Irish History - OCH
320) which, according to Yeats, spoke out of a people to a people (Selected
Criticism 256). Further, this literature was seen as the genuine history which has
a privileged access to Irishness, while history, in the strict sense, was seen as
an Anglo-Irish colonial imposture (OCH 320).
Alongside the Romantic Movement
throughout Europe, in Ireland cultural nationalism was also being promoted, by a
group of nationalist writers and politicians who were labelled the Young
Irelanders in 18 44. Among their chief leaders were Thomas Davis, John Blake Dillon
and Charles Gavan Duffy, all of whom remained influential figures throughout the
rest of the century. They resolved that it is expedient to establish Reading-rooms
in the Parishes of Ireland (Davis 242); and, although the intellectual activities
of these societies and clubs were often narrow and ill informed (OCH 38 1), some
of these Young Ireland Societies survived the suppression of the Young Ireland
Movement, as such, when they attempted an unsuccessful rebellion in 18 48 . By the

end of the 19 th century, they operated as centres of nationalist activity (OCH

38 1) which preserved the legacy of the Young Irelanders, whose chief merit was in
passing the romantic sense of Ireland to the following generations of nationalists
(OCH 603). Thomas Davis essentially laid the foundation-stone of the later Irish
Renaissance he contrasted the philistinism and gradgrindery of England with the
superior idealism and imagination of Ireland (Kiberd 22). In an essay published in
The Nation, a newspaper issued by the Young Irelanders, Davis states that when a
country is without national poetry, it proves its hopeless dullness or its utter
provincialism (Davis 223). He understood well that a cultural colony is prone to
imitate the literature of the mother country; and in order to gain independence, it
was essential to displace the constricting environment and its forms (Kiberd 115)
and to create a proper national literature different from that of the English. This
national form of art was to be the romantic ballad, which Charles Gavan Duffy
declared to be the supreme form of public art (Dwan, Ancient Sect 207 ). Such
ballads were seen as the essential and perhaps basic constituent when defining the
nation:
Ballads have been among the first home-grown productions of all
countries; and their popularity here, now, is no slight evidence that the national
mind is still fresh and earnest, and has the impulses and propensities that belong
to a young nation. (Duffy, Preface, 4th Edition)The ballads Duffy is considering
are not the popular folk ballads of country peasants, but what he calls our AngloIrish ballads (Introduction to The Ballad Poetry of Ireland 15), representing
Irish canonical art as set against that of the English. They were susceptible of
this distinct and intrinsic nationality (Introduction The Ballad Poetry of
Ireland 23) nobody who is not an Irishman could have written them. By making
Anglo-Irish ballads the canonical Irish literature of the 19 th century, the AngloIrish Ascendancy was also avowing their own Irish identity. Though still hazy and
vague, the nation started define itself through literature and art. However,
perhaps the most notable poet of the period and the greatest influence on the
young Yeats was Samuel Fergusson, who, despite being a Northern Ireland Unionist,
was attracted by Daviss cultural nationalism and turned the national literatures
interest towards mythology. He translated a few Gaelic poems and wrote his own epic
poems inspired by Irish legends in which he strove to present a case for a form of
Irish self-government (Oxford Companion to Irish Literature - OCL 18 6). His
greatest effort was to spread the knowledge of Ancient Ireland in Victorian Ireland
(OCL 18 6) and, thus, to enhance the awareness of Irish national identity. According
to Robert Welch, this is a usual phenomenon in colonies and former colonies:The
search for the authentic Irishness and ancient tradition is a phase of the postcolonial experience when the native or the natives spokesman asserts the
continuity of racial substrate of the colony in mystical terms. (Introduction to
Writings on Folklore 34)With this though being dominant during the nationalist era,
in 18 53 The Ossianic Society was founded by Standish Hayes OGrady, its main aim
being to preserve and publish the manuscripts of ancient Ireland (OCL 458 ); for
these scholars believed that, to build the identity of a nation, it is important to
know the history of the peoples ancestors and to ask the question, How did their
personality affect the minds of their people and posterity? (OGrady, Cuchulain
2).
The effort to create a link to the aforementioned racial substrate of the
colony was not seen only in literature and art. From the ashes of the Young
Ireland Movement a new movement arose the Fenians. They were a secret nationalist
organization founded by James Stephens, which later became known as the Irish
Republican Brotherhood (IRB), and which functioned from the second half of the 19 th
century into the 20th (OCH 18 9 , 27 2). By the very act of naming themselves the
Fenians, they reinforced the nationalist message they were willing to fight for,
asserting their identity as a continuation of the mythological past for, in the
Fionn Cycle of Irish mythology, the Fenians were the members of the Fianna, a
group of the toughest warriors in Ireland of their time, its protectors. It was a
good choice, since the Fionn Cycle was the most popular and widely known of such
works (MacCana 106), and, therefore, all the better to be employed in the process
of modelling a national identity. Moreover, the typical motif of mythological
heroes waiting in some reclusive place until the need to save the country arises

(in this case, manifested by a well known legend about mythological heroes sleeping
in a cave from whence they will emerge to save Ireland in the last hour of doom
[Tynan qtd. in Williams 306]), enabled the members of the Fenian Movement to assert
their continuity to and even their identification
with their mythological predecessors.
Among the most famous Fenians was John
OLeary, who had a major influence on the Irish Renaissance of the 18 8 0s. He was a
romantic and heroic figure a fighting Fenian and revolutionary who had suffered
hardships in an English prison, but was well read in poetry and letters at the same
time (OCL 444). When, in 18 8 5, he was allowed to return to Dublin, young emerging
authors flocked about him to take fire from his lips (Tynan 267 ). Katharine
Tynan, one of the prominent figures of the early literary revival, described him as
a dear, great, simple, heroic old man who was something of a literary critic to
us (Tynan 267 ). OLeary, in a way, initiated Yeats into nationalism and was
responsible for his development as a national poet; by giving him Young Ireland
poetry to read, by influencing his ideas on nation and literature, by urging him to
join the Young Ireland Society and introducing him into the Irish Republican
Brotherhood (Foster 43, Jeffares 100), and, most importantly, by serving as an
example of a man without hope of success whose service was none the less devoted
to a romantic, idealised conception of nationalism (Jeffars, Man and Poet 30).
Yeats himself acknowledges this in his Reveries over Childhood and Youth:From these
debates, from OLearys conversation, and from the Irish books he lent or gave me
has come all I have set my hand to since. (Autobiographies 125)OLeary became the
centre of nationalist cultural life in Dublin in the late 18 8 0s, where meetings
were held on a weekly basis in clubs and societies, such as the Young Ireland
Society (a continuation of the Young Ireland Societies of the 18 40s), whose ethos
was, under OLeary as its president, distinctly armchair Fenian (Foster 42); and
the Contemporary Club, a place where Unionist and Nationalist could interrupt one
another and interrupt one another without the formal and traditional restraint of
public speech (Yeats, Autobiographies 115). At these meetings, the social,
political and literary questions of the day were discussed (Yeats qtd. in Foster
41), with young men and their older mentors mostly constituting the core of these
societies (OCH 38 0). Apart from OLeary, the other famous attendees of these
meetings included Douglas Hyde, the future founder of the Gaelic League, whose
Irish songs were made as independently as though no Anglo-Irish writer had come
before him: as though none should come after him (Tynan 267 ); Katharine Tynan, a
young poet and Yeatss close friend, whose impassioned and instinctive Catholicism
was a permanent part of Irish literature (Yeats qtd. in Foster 55)#; George
Russell, writing under the penname , who was, in Tynans words, the dreamer of
dreams [and] seer of visions (267 ); Michael Davit, a former Fenian; as well as T.
W. Rolleston, J. F. Taylor, and the Yeatses, both father and son. Especially in the
Young Ireland Societies, apart from discussing political opinions, many young,
unknown poets men whose names, Yeatss admits, you have not heard (Ideas of
Good and Evil 1) continued in the tradition of looking for their national
identity through a literature which would be autonomous:If somebody could make a
style which would not be an English style and yet would be musical and full of
colour, many others would catch fire from him, and we would have a really great
school of ballad poetry in Ireland. (Ideas of Good and Evil 2)The goal was not only
to create national ballad poetry, but also to nurture a national identity which
would unify all the people of Ireland, catching fire one from another. In this
spirit, Unity of Culture would become the binding force to achieve the unity of
the nation in the words of Thomas Carlyle, they would become men animated by one
great Idea (Whitaker 326). The kind of outlook coloured the nationalism of the
late 18 8 0s and 18 9 0s with a tint of mysticism, as well as interconnected the two
(especially for Yeats and ), which further promoted concerns for acquiring and
crafting Celtic material.
Yeats might have adopted some of these ideas from
Standish OGrady, who became known as the Father of the Literary Revival in
Ireland (Boyd 18 ). Described by Lady Gregory as a Fenian Unionist (Boyd 17 ), he
was attracted to Irish legends, which, being part of the peoples history, could
serve to unite the Irish. His attitude to these legends was, however, not that of a

sober scholarly academic, but rather that of a novelist. He attempted to popularize

these legends, and adopted a style at once high flown and graphic to convey the
grandeur, as he saw it, of the [mythological] cycle (OCL 434). Most famously, he
wrote the two-volume History of Ireland: Heroic Period (18 7 8 ) and History if
Ireland: Chuchulain and his Contemporaries (18 8 0). Through these books, he filled
a fruitful generation of young writers with the proud consciousness of nationality
divorced from mere politics and directed them back to the roots of national
thought (Boyd 18 ). His multifarious knowledge of Gaelic legend and Gaelic history
and a most Celtic temperament have put him in communion with the moods that have
[always] been over Irish purposes (Yeats qtd. in Hirsh, Irish Peasant 1121). In
the same way that, in Daviss era of the 18 60s, national ballads were seen as a
touchstone of nationalism, in the late 18 8 0s and 18 9 0s mythology and supernatural
Celticism became the basis of national thought, and the focus was moved more
towards writing that could be dubbed mystical.
While societies and clubs
flourished on the cultural scene, the political scene was dominated by the Land War
and the Home Rule Movement. Home Rule was the aim of constitutional nationalists,
and it entailed having the same ruler, executive and council for state affaires,
while home affaires would by solved by each countrys own parliaments. The leader
of the Irish parliamentary party since 18 8 0, Charles Stewart Parnell, who was often
seen as the solitary and proud leader (Yeats, Autobiographies 241), led the
movement with extreme success and, by 18 8 5, Fenianism seemed the heroic past and
the Parnellite constitutionalism the hopeful future (Foster 41). However, his
plans for Ireland, despite seeming promising, were thwarted in 18 8 9 by the public
revelation of his lengthy affair with Cathy OShea, a married woman. His reputation
suffered greatly: Gladstone refused to proceed in his dealings with an adulterer;
and, consequently, Parnell lost the by-elections, being denounced as a public
sinner unfit for leadership by the Roman Catholic Church (Kiberd 23). Catholic
Ireland, in particular, campaigned against Parnellism, which was labelled simple
love for adultery (Kee 202). As a result, his party split. Even though the reality
was less black and white, traditionally he was assessed as a man with a brilliant
career brought to a tragic end (OCH 431). This is also what Yeats and his circle
thought about Parnell; OLeary, Tynan and Yeats firmly adhered to the Parnellite
camp, claiming that Parnell has driven up into dust and vacuum no end of
insincerities (Yeats qtd. in Foster 113). Yeats himself saw Parnell as a martyr,
perhaps even an incarnation of the proud, stern heroism of old. Yet after the
failure of Parnells politics and his death in 18 9 1, with the political hopes for
achieving Home Rule being shattered, it was the cultural movement which took up the
mantle of upholding and developing nationalism. Yeats expressed this stance in the
end of his Four Years:It was the death of Parnell that convinced me that the
moment had come for work in Ireland, for I knew that for a time the imagination of
young men would turn from politics. (9 1)That fact that many of the Irish
intellectuals who had taken Parnells side had grown disillusioned by contemporary
political events provided fertile ground for a mission to create a national
literature from 18 9 1 (Foster 115). This is, however, not exactly true; national
literary societies as well as the broader Cultural Revolution cannot be
considered as only the result of political activism being squelched these
societies abounded already in the 18 8 0s, and were originally intended to support
Parnellite constitutionalism (Foster 43). Still, it is a common claim, whether myth
or not, that Parnells fall enhanced the Literary Revival. Later in his life, Yeats
liked to present it this way, which can be seen in his Nobel Prize lecture,
delivered in 19 23:The modern literature of Ireland, and indeed all that stir of
thought which prepared for the Anglo-Irish War, began when Parnell fell from power
in 18 9 1. A disillusioned and embittered Ireland turned away from parliamentary
politics; an event was conceived and the race began, as I think, to be troubled by
that events long gestation. (Selected Criticism 19 5)Thus, the Literary Revival per
se seen as an Anglo-Irish effort to revive Irish literature written in England
through the use of Gaelic material began in the 18 9 0s with the fall of Parnell,
though this revival was firmly rooted in the literary societies of the 18 8 0s and
its precursors, reaching back to Standish OGrady and even to Samuel Fergusson. It

was soon dominated by names such as Yeats, Augusta Gregory, Synge and Hyde (OCH
319 ) Yeats was definitely the moving force of the Revival; in the words of George
Moore, All the Irish movement rose out of Yeats and return to Yeats (qtd. in Reid
150). However, in the 18 9 0s his prospects did not seem particularly promising. The
Revival was not a homogenous movement; there was no consensus on how identity was
to be defined or preserved (OCH 319 ); and, for a young author, it was extremely
difficult to win recognition as the future national poet whose art was meant to
unite the country. In his Autobiographies, Yeats bitterly remembers the Dublin
after Parnell:
picking and dropping men merely because it likes, or dislikes, their manners,
and their looks, and in its stead opinion crushes and rends, and all is hatred and
bitterness: when biting upon wheel, a roar of steel or iron tackle, a mill of
argument grinding all things down to mediocrity. (28 5)Yeats had a particular reason
for this bitterness, for he strove to establish a national literature canon, based
on an Irish style that would make Ireland beautiful in memory (Autobiographies
126), that would be non-English and yet not provincial and restricted. However, in
an environment too influenced by the Young Ireland images and metaphors
(Autobiographies 251) which Yeats criticized as not being good poetry (Selected
Criticism 256) he was doomed to failure, and was accused of being under English
influence (Jeffars, Man and Poet 7 7 ). He was forced from the national literary
scene by older and more distinguished authors such as Charles Gavan Duffy, who
returned in the 18 9 0s from Australia and, as the incarnation of the famous Young
Ireland Movement, gained control over the literary circles in Dublin. Duffy was
taking, however, a backward step what he wanted, according to Yeats, was to
complete the Young Ireland Movement (Autobiographies 27 9 ), republishing and
publishing unpublished works by the generations of the 18 40s and 18 50s
(Autobiographies 28 1). Some of this nationalist literary activity, as represented
by the younger and fresher generation, moved to London, where Yeats lived from 18 8 7
to 18 9 1, the year he founded the London Irish Literary Society, which soon
included every London Irish author and journalist (Yeats, Four Years 9 2). However,
the precursor of this society was likely the already well-established Rhymers Club
in London, one of whose members and co-founders was Yeats himself. The club had a
Celtic flavour and orientation (Foster 107 ), with a predominance of Irish
membership, including the likes of Yeats, Rolleston, Todhunter, Wilde and Lionel
Johnson (Welch, Companion 27 4). Johnson, who was neither born nor raised in
Ireland, but who was the son of an Irish officer, felt drawn to the Revival, and is
often seen as one of the Revivalists writing poetry for the Irish cause (OCL 27 4).
Subsequently, Yeats returned to Dublin, where he founded the National
Literary Society and placed OLeary in its presidential chair. He was full of
ambition: he was busily planning a series of public lectures about national
literature to be delivered by his lifelong love, Maud Gonne (Jeffares 7 5), who
could draw great crowds out of the slums by her beauty and sincerity (Yeats,
Poetry and Ireland 5); he launched a project for editing a series of books to be
called The Library of Ireland (Foster 117 ). However, while bringing these plans
to realization, he found opponents not only in Gavan Duffy, J.F. Taylor and the
older generation who must have seen him as a young man too rude to follow
tradition (Yeats, Autobiographies 27 9 ) but also in his contemporaries, who turned
against him because, according to OLeary, they were jealous (Autobiographies
28 2).
Clubs and societies associated with the National Literary Society and
professing cultural nationalism flourished in this period, and, in 18 9 2, Yeats
established the Irish National Dramatic Society (Jeffares 119 ). Although founded
earlier, the Gaelic Athletic Association took an openly revolutionary stance in the
18 9 0s (OCH 212); and, more importantly, the Gaelic League was founded in 18 9 3 by
Douglas Hyde, the greatest folklorist that ever lived, and one who was to create
a great popular movement (Yeats, Autobiographies 27 0). Although the League was not
meant as a political movement, Patrick Pearse, looking back, called it the most
revolutionary influence that has ever come to Ireland (qtd. in Hirsch, Irish
Peasant 1122). This demonstrates the importance of the cultural nationalism of the
18 9 0s in defining what it meant to be Irish and in establishing national identity.

The creed of the era was deanglicization whether through language or

through cultural deanglicization in general. Disputes arose between the Irish
Ireland branch, who thought it important to build national identity on the basis of
language, and the nationalists, who were mainly from protestant backgrounds and
were opposed to this idea, understanding deanglicization rather on the level of
confronting English utilitarianism with the Irish nobleness they believed still
resided in folklore, mythology and some kind of Celtic abstract transcendence to
higher values (Kiberd 136-54). Peasants were defined by the Revivalists as the
essence of an ancient, dignified Irish culture, and their supernatural folklore
and imaginative wealth were posed against the modern industrial and commercial
British spirit (Hirsch, Irish Peasant 1120). In such a context, folklore gained
even greater importance than before in the creation of Irish identity. In 18 9 0,
Douglas Hyde wrote Beside the Fire, the first really scientific treatment of Irish
folklore (Bramsbck 12), and Yeats compiled and edited two books of Irish folk
tales: Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry (18 8 8 ) and Irish Fairy Tales
(18 9 2). His Celtic Twilight, a big book about the commonwealth of faery (The
Celtic Twilight 3), appeared in 18 9 3; it was this book that gave the Revival its
popular nickname, The Celtic Twilight (OCH 319 ). Yeats also befriended Lady
Augusta Gregory, a protestant aristocratic folklorist and a fairy godmother
(Russell, Imaginations and Reveries 28 ) of the Revival, who, at the turn of the
20th century, translated and wrote a complete encapsulation of Irish Mythology,
published as Gods and Fighting Men and Cchalain Muirtheme. Further, she and Yeats
co-founded the Irish National Theatre, one of the main executive forces of the
Revival.2.2. Self-fashioning Having outlined the historical and cultural
development of the second half of the 19 th century in Ireland, the ideas that ruled
the era should be analysed in greater detail. The term self-fashioning is often
used in connection with the English Renaissance, which brought an increasing selfconsciousness about the fashioning of the human identity as a manipulable, artful
process (Greenblat 2). Ireland, however, having been bereft of its national
identity in the 16th century through Elizabethan colonization, came to this point
of self-fashioning much later, and the process of conscious defining of an identity
did not begin until the 19 th century; the parallels to the English Renaissance
caused the Revival to be called, sometimes, the Irish Renaissance. Due to the
fall of the Gaelic order (and the subsequent shattering of the original native
culture) and the centuries of enforced provincialism by the New English settlers
(Kiberd 3), Irelands natural development as a nation was suspended; and, compared
to England, it was at a different stage (Yeats, Nationalism and Literature 8 5)
a young nation whose identity was yet to be formed via cultural nationalism.
According to Prof. Hirsch, Irish writers can be distinguished from English writers
on the grounds of a complex national identity (Irish Peasant 1121). The
English, who were the conquerors hence, had power in their hands did not feel
the need to assert their national identity in literature, whereas the Irish needed
to assert some kind of national unity to get rid of the constituent element of
their identity defined as the colonizedand, therefore, the powerless.
The
quest of Yeatss generation was to renovate Irish consciousness and to make
Ireland once again interesting to the Irish (Kiberd 3). It is, of course,
impossible to generalize regarding so complex a process as the building of a
nations identity; but, if simplified for the present purposes, it can be said that
there were two main strategies which merged the natural and the artificial:
supporting the notion of a kind of inherent nationality rooted in the people
themselves (which is unconscious); and dwelling on the idea of defining Irish as
not-English. From both of these conceptions sprang an interest in Celticism,
mythology and folklore.2.2.1. Epic integrity
One of the two above-mentioned
underlying concepts of this process was the idea presented by Yeats in his lecture
Nationality and Literature, published in 18 9 3. In this lecture, he claims that
all nations and their literatures are ageing and growing from epic to lyrical, like
a tree which grows from unity to multiplicity, from simplicity to complexity
(Nationality and Literature 8 6). A young nation that has yet to be fully formed
and achieve national and cultural unity is still in the stage of an epic society,

and this is reflected in its literature, which ties the nation together. This
literature has a mutually affecting relationship with society:Society presents
itself through the epic, while the epic installs and maintains that social
structure. Epic art is therefore internal to the social practice it describes.
(Dwan 2004, 203)Therefore, a society mirrors and is mirrored by the epic literature
it produces. The authors, by maintaining the epic canon, were supporting the epic
social structure, which led to an unconscious unity which was presumably felt by
the people; an epic society is characterized by the citizens identification with
his own social basis of the national unit he pertains to. This identification was
immediate, and was not a function of reflective deliberation or individual choice
or preference (Dwan 2004, 208 ). This idea of unity in an epic society corresponds
to Michael Foucaults theory about the character of a pre-classical episteme, which
could be found in England before its Renaissance (this could also be applicable to
pre-Revival, epic Ireland). Since the pre-classical episteme (as opposed to
the classical one which is based on difference) is based on similarity it draws
things together, seeks for any kind of kinship or a shared nature of things
(Cairns, Richards 2).
Yeats argued that alone, perhaps, among the nations of
Europe we [Irish] are in our ballad or epic age (Yeats, Nationality and
Literature 9 1): hence, the belief that Ireland possesses an inherent unity which
can be re-established through looking back to the epic legends of the past
Yeatss idea in the early 18 9 0s was that it was by looking to the past that the
poet served the present because this way he reaches the more fundamental level
of the Irish peoples spirituality (Cairns, Richards 68 -69 ). Yeats, as well as
OGrady, believed that Irelands history is a downfall from heroic unity to modern
fragmentation (Whitaker 326). Therefore, to retrieve that unity, one must look into
the heroic past, where epic art can be found; this epic art will foster an epic
society held together by the aforementioned epic unity. Moreover, legends were
ideal for this purpose, not only because they determine the unified society, but
also because they represent it, Yeats claims:[They are] made by no one man, but by
the nation itself through a slow process of modification and adaptation, to express
its loves and its hates, its likes and its dislikes. (qtd. in Dwan, "Ancient Sect
204)The basic idea behind this, though, was that poetry transcends subjective human
individuality and that poets are just representatives of a far greater force than
themselves. Yeats saw poetry as the product of an anonymous tradition that
operates behind the backs of poets (Dwan, Ancient Sect 205), and claimed that a
people is bound together by the imaginative possessions which it owns and by
stories and poems which have grown out of its own life (Yeats, Ideas of Good and
Evil 337 ). The Young Irelanders adhered to this very principle when they wrote
national ballads, though perhaps in a much less metaphysical way than Yeats and his
generation did. John Todhunters invocation portrays how poets of the 18 8 0s and
18 9 0s reached out in an attempt to grasp inspiration from the supernatural and the
ancient:O wind, O mighty, melancholy wind,Blow, through me, blow,Thou blowest
forgotten things into my mindFrom long ago. (Mighty Melancholy Wind, ll. 5-8 , in
Lyra Celtica 17 3)In Celtic lore, wind had supernatural associations,# so Todhunter
is linking himself to the unearthly powers that will help him transcend into the
world of ancient art. Ancient art, as opposed to modern, is here treated as a
unifying force not only because of its epic integral unity, but also because it
speaks to peoples deeper, unconscious identity. According to Yeats, in modern
times this effect can be gained through holding to national motifs, whether folk or
mythological:If Shelley had nailed his Prometheus or some equal symbol upon some
Welsh or Scottish rock, their [his and Morriss] art had entered more intimately,
more microscopically, as it were, into our thought, and had given perhaps to modern
poetry a breadth and stability like that of ancient poetry. (Autobiographies 18 5)
Ancient poetry and poetry sticking to folklore and myths therefore enters more
intimately and more microscopically into readers thoughts, thus affecting the
mentioned unconscious identity. Therefore, Yeatss chief concern was to nail his
poetry to some Irish rock; in his essay Ireland and the Arts, he acknowledges
that he could not now write of any other country but Ireland (Ideas of Good and
Evil 329 ). His writings about Ireland, however, differ from the poems written by

his predecessors and most of his contemporaries poems such as Daviss A Nation
Once Again or Lionel Johnsons Ways of War; though strikingly different from
Yeatss poetry, these poems by Davis and Johnson, too, emerge from the same idea of
ancient unity:A dream! a dream! an ancient dream!Yet, ere peace come to Innisfail,
Some weapons on some field must gleam,Some burning fire of the Gael. (Ways of War
1316)However, while others poetry usually strove to affect the readers on the
more superficial level of boosting their national pride and inspiring them to
embrace nationalism, Yeatss poetry was instead preoccupied with Ireland (Yeats,
Poetry and Ireland 3), because he wanted his poems to penetrate deeper into the
peoples minds on the metaphysical level; and, by touching something unconscious
and mystical in them, he was trying to form their conception of themselves as Irish
and to revive in them the feeling of unity.
This indirect appeal can also be
found in the works of Ferguson, with Duffy describing his poems as not suggestive
or didactic, but fired with a living and local interest. They appeal to the
imagination and passions, not to the intellects (Duffy, Introduction to The
Ballad Poetry of Ireland 32). What Yeats admired in Fergusons poetry was a kind of
savage, primitive truth, a truth which was also, in his opinion, one of the
greatest values of Irish literature. Fergusons work based on mythology had the
essence of barbarous truth; and it was for this that Ferguson was labelled by
Yeats the greatest Irish poet (Yeats qtd. in Hirsch, Irish Peasant 1121). The
importance of truth and beauty for the Irish national cause was stressed even
further in a 19 03 essay, published in the magazine Samhain, in which Yeats
proclaimed them to be the autonomous constituent of national literature:Beauty and
truth are always justified of themselves, and that their creation is a greater
service to our country than writing that compromises either in the seeming service
of a cause. (qtd. in Marcus 7 6)Consistent with the 18 8 0s and 18 9 0s being the era of
Aestheticism in Ireland as in Britain, Beauty was considered to be one of the
touchstones holding a nation together, and serving to represent and characterize
it. The notion of beauty is often connected to mythology: expressions such as wild
beauty (Yeats, Ideas of Good and Evil 324) and Eternal Beauty (Russel, Priest
or Hero) are attributed to Irish legends and Celtic lore. Yeatss first poems were
described in the early 20th century by Forrest Reid as possessing a pagan and
sensuous beauty (Reid 36); and, for Yeats and others, beauty, art and paganism
were often connected, for the secret fount of inspiration and the images
illuminating the artists brain lay in the ancestral beauty (Russell,
Imaginations and Reveries 40). These legends, though they were set in the past,
could help construct the present and the future through art and beauty they
contain so much of a new beauty, that they may well give the opening century its
most memorable symbols (Yeats, Ideas of Good and Evil 29 5). The symbols installed
through art would help to introduce what modernity lacked, a social, moral and
aesthetic coherence (Dwan, Ancient Sect 201; italics added), a coherence which
marked ancient Ireland. 2.2.2. Artificial Self-Fashioning However, this idea of
inherent nationality embedded in an epic society was not nearly enough to build a
solid national identity upon, an identity which would be able to inspire the fight
for Irelands liberation. Although Yeats claimed that Ireland was in her epic or
ballad age, by the late 19 th century Irish national identity could no longer be
based only on the pre-classical episteme of similarity, and the notion of
difference came increasingly to play its role. National consciousness had to be
created and Ireland had to be defined somehow; and the definition of Ireland
closest at hand was not-England. The roots of this tendency to pattern Ireland
as not-England reach back to the Elizabethan era, when these conquered people
were seen as the very antithesis of their English rulers (Kiberd 9 ). At that
time, the English were going through the process of Renaissance self-fashioning,
for which a continued presence of an other was required, so that the
maintenance of subtle points of differentiation would support and sustain their
superordination (Cairns, Richards 10). In the 19 th century, however, Irish
nationalists availed themselves of this concept of otherness and used it to support
their nationalist cause. They embraced [] the clichs of the Anglo-Saxonist
theory and reinterpreted them in a more positive light (Kiberd 32),# and innate

Irish virtues became defined against English vices (Cairns, Richards 63).
Therefore, the Irish found their own singularity on the basis of its difference
from Englishness.
This concept created a set of dichotomies. Mathew Arnold,
drawing on Ernest Renan, ascribed to Ireland a feminine quality: he presented the
notion of the Teuton as the energetic, brutal warrior completed by Celt, the
producer of civility and culture (Cairns, Richards 45). From the basic dichotomy
masculinevs. feminine, sprang a number of other dichotomies emotional vs.
intellectual, traditional vs. modern, artistic vs. practical, natural vs.
industrial (Cairns, Richards 44-50; Kiberd 31-32). The Irish were seen to have, as
opposed to the English, the Celtic genius, sentiment as its main brains, with the
love for beauty, charm, spirituality for its excellence (Arnold qtd. in Cairns,
Richards 48 ).# All these qualities defined here as purely Irish were encompassed
in ancient legends, which, moreover, were something that English culture, to a
large extent, lacked.# Ireland assumed the mystical role in direct opposition to
secular England; the Irish are here associated with the Celtic race, which was seen
as having something magical about it, something which Renan described as a love of
nature for herself, a vivid feeling for her magic, commingled with the melancholy a
man knows when he is face to face with her, and thinks he hears her communing with
him about his origin and is destiny
(qtd. in Yeats, Ideas of Good and Evil 27 0). The mystical role assigned to Ireland
predetermined building Irish identity via turning to a heroic past, mythology and
the supernatural which was seen as something singularly Irish, or perhaps Celtic.
Through the legends they promoted, on one hand, all the positive elements of their
identity which were defined by dichotomies such as traditional, natural, poetic; on
the other, they breached the concept of Ireland being feminine thus, subjected
and passive by depicting the heroic past with its warriors and gods: the ancient
warriors are characterized as symbols of a once-independent Ireland. The gods
similarly represent the unpolluted Soul of Ireland, free from foreign influence
(Marcus 318 ). Mythology enabled the Irish to combine the supposed positive
qualities inherent to the Celtic race (such as being poetical and artistic) with
the rougher features for example, Oisn, one of the most famous heroes of the
Fionn Cycle, was described as the warrior-bard (OGrady Selected Essays 109 );
and, more generally, to be accepted into the Fianna warrior group, one had to be
skilled in poetry as well as fighting and hunting (Lady Gregory 123). The main
enemies of the Irish at the turn of the 20th century were English ideas and
English culture rather than English soldiers (Marcus 314). Clinging to legends and
folklore was felt to be the best weapon for fighting the so-called West
Britonism, a term used by Douglas Hyde to denote the Irish peoples acceptance of
English values and culture (Hyde, Necessity for De-Anglicising). The fairies and
mythical heroes were expected to save the Irish from becoming overly similar to
their colonizers as already mentioned, the supernatural folklore and imaginative
wealth of the Irish peasant were used as a weapon against the modern industrial
and commercial British spirit (Hirsch, Irish Peasant 1120). This identity based
on mythology and folklore often had nothing to do with political preferences, but
instead with cultural pertinence to a certain tradition. Samuel Fergusson, from the
political point of view a conservative unionist, wrote epic poetry based on Irish
legends, which strongly opposed all that Yeats associated with West Britonism and
what he derogatively terms the leprosy of the modern (Hirsch, Irish Peasant
1121).
According to Cairns and Richards, English materialism, which was
creeping into Ireland, was fought, on the part of the Anglo-Irish, by trying to
establish a society which would be parallel to the Celtic social order:
Industrialism and materialism are enemies to Ireland and will be fought via the
concept of Ascendancy as the chieftains and their people (56). From the
ideological point of view, modernity, too, became the enemy; for in a nation
defined in terms of the past, modernity poses a threat to its ancestral
integrity and therefore might undermine the idea of national identity (Cairns,
Richards 65). The past was something the nation could cling to, and, moreover, in
these first centuries the Celt made himself (Yeats, Writings on Folklore 51), so
it was to serve as an example for re-creating the nation in the coming times. At

the turn of the 20th century, in his essay Poetry and Tradition, Yeats claimed
that the Revivalists were forging in Ireland a new sword on our old traditional
anvil for that great battle that must in the end re-establish the old, confident,
joyous world (Poetry and Ireland 5). However, historical accuracy was not the goal
in this process. In the same essay Yeats admits that it is perhaps from this out
an imaginary Ireland, in whose service he labours (Poetry and Ireland 1; italics
added). It was important that history and tradition were depicted in an appealing
manner; being presented via myths, OGrady claims, the ancient legends can become
kind of a history a nation desires to possess (OGrady, Selected Essays, 41;
italics added). The Irish identity was incomplete, and people lacked certain
virtues, because Ireland lacked models for the development of its identity
(Marcus 8 1). The nation needed myths in order to create the desired history, upon
which they could built their Irishness. According to , mythical characters begin
to stir us with their power, and Angus, Lu, Ossian, Deirdre, Finn etc, will be
found to be each one the symbol of enduring qualities (qtd. in Williams 315).
Poets, who, in the late 19 th century, brought these personifications of
enduring qualities back to life, posed as bards of the nation. Bards had a
special rank in Celtic society, being the conservers of tradition and rulers of
knowledge. In pre-Elizabethan Ireland there were two types of poets: praise-poetry
oriented bards, and the filidh a professional class who had the status of seers,
teachers, advisors of the rulers and prophets. (MacCana 14-15). These two classes
of poets merged; and, consequently, the figure of a bard, performing all these
functions, gained an extremely powerful position in the society, and assumed a
nation-forming character. Yeats, in an article from the 18 9 0s, observes that this
power of the bards was responsible, it may be, for one curious thing in ancient
Celtic history its self-consciousness (Writings on Folklore 51). If the 19 th
century poets wanted to recreate the Irish self-consciousness once again, they
had to model themselves upon the example of the Celtic bards; hence the tendency of
Yeatss to pose as a bard, which can be seen, for example, in his self-modelling
into the role of the Celt who is returning from London to Ireland to fulfil the
dreams of the National Literary Society (Yeats, Selected Criticism 17 ). Even though
Yeats had no Celtic ancestors whatsoever, in his essay The Irish National Literary
Society, (which is, in fact, a manifesto of his plans for Ireland in the early
9 0s), he refers to himself as the Celt. He defines himself as Irish by drawing a
link to his ancestral race, to which he, however, does not belong from the ethnic
point of view.# He renounced the ethnic delimitation of the Celtic race, and sought
for their identity in more nebulous terms (Cairns, Richards 67 ). Within these
nebulous terms he, and other authors of the period, assumed the role of the bard,
which is reflected in the use of heroic and mythical themes in the late 19 th
century poetry.# The poetry of the 19 th century bards often had the character of a
manifestation, and, although it spoke about the past, it was looking towards the
future this stand is taken in Yeatss manifesto poem To Ireland in the Coming
Times (Campbell 11) where he establishes the poet as a link in the continuum of
the nations history; in the older Yeatss words from 19 27 , the poet is singing of
what is past, passing or to come (Sailing to Byzantium 32).2.3. Role of Art in
Ireland
Having touched upon the importance of art in the process of selffashioning, the principles underlying this important role should be elaborated. The
process of re-establishing Irish self-consciousness and national identity through
history and mythology, using art as a vehicle, is rooted in the idea, already
briefly mentioned, that art forms the society. Yeats was influenced by Oscar
Wildes reversion of the commonplace formula Art imitates Life into Life
imitates Art; Wilde draws an example from classical Greece, explaining that they
[the Greeks] knew that Life gains from Art not merely spirituality, depth of
thought and feeling, soul-turmoil or soul-peace, but that she can form herself on
the very lines and colours of art (Marcus 7 3). This conception gives grounds to s
idea that through depicting mythical characters that embody the very virtues that
Ireland lacked these virtues will actually be created. (Williams 315). However,
drawing Irish identity on Celtic art poses a problem, formulated by Lionel Johnson
in his lecture Poetry and Patriotism when he asks: After all, who is to decide,

what is, absolutely and definitely, the Celtic and Irish note? (Johnson, Poetry
and Ireland 31). According to the popular opinion, based partly on the Renan /
Arnoldian Celticism, Celtic poetry is drenched in the dew of natural magic (Sharp
23) and possesses a strange, remote, far-away beauty in the music and in the
colour (Johnson Poetry and Ireland 31), dream-like music (Sharp 44); further, the
Celtic genius is characterised by a strange melancholy (Sharp 49 ). Therefore,
art, to be considered Celtic, had to have a certain transcendental value which
would reach beyond the crude reality into the supernatural and imaginary world of
dreams and magic.
The art of the Young Ireland movement strove to represent
the essence of Irishness. They had provided some simple images to help build up
models necessary for the development of the Irish identity, which were lacking in
Irish culture before, (Marcus 8 1) and did much to the credit of Irish nature,
even if not availing wholly to the advantage of Irish literature (Johnson, Poetry
and Ireland 28 ). The Young Irelanders poetry came to be treated as the canon and
the one and only truly Irish art; in the words of Lionel Johnson, who shared many
opinions on art with Yeats, in the poetry of the Nation and of Young Ireland,
we have a fixed and unalterable standard, whereby to judge all Irish poetry, past
and present and to come (Johnson, Poetry and Ireland 21). This, however, led to
certain rigidity and Yeats, having in mind the future of Irish literature, was
vigorously attacking their poetry, claiming the Young Ireland writing to be
exceedingly vague and propagandistic the verses were full of vague, abstract
words such as one finds in a newspaper (Autobiographies 126). In his opinion, this
kind of popularity was but fleeting, as it was united with politics and
economics (Yeats qtd. in Marcus 7 5). Moreover,
from the literary point of view, these poems seemed to him and his followers
written carelessly; composed in a rush of sentiment, without paying much
attention to delicate graces of art. Yet this very quality made them be
considered great art in the eyes of the nationalists because, by being unfettered
as the Irish winds, the verses could best express the nature of the Irish nation
(Johnson, Poetry and Ireland 23). Yeats opposed the commonplace thought of the
era that poets should hiss at the villain and that the greater the talent the
greater the hiss (Autobiographies 254); this hissing often turned melodramatic:Who
fears, with cause so holy,The pirate Dane, the pirate Dane?Although the Saxon,
lowly,Now brooks his chain! now brooks his chain! (The Dalcassians War-Song ll.
17 -20 in The Spirit of the Nation 43)These verses are trying to provide the
aforementioned models for the development of national identity, which would be
based on heroic deeds of old the poem referrs to the battle of Clontarf where the
Gaelic tribe of Dalcassians, led by Brian Boru, beat the Danes (OCH 100, 135).
There is nothing individual about the poem; it is a voice of a nation heated by
battle in times long ago. Through the use of questions and exclamations the writer
means to appeal directly to the reader and the general choral tone is supposed to
enable any reader to identify with the heroic warriors of old; which can be seen as
an example of the pre-classical episteme, mentioned in the previous chapter, and
the togetherness of an epic society based on similarity.
Yeats, however, found
mere identification deficient, and so he aspired to affect the people in a more
metaphysical way through the arts; in Ideas of Good and Evil, he looks back to the
past and claims that in very early days arts were almost inseparable from
religion (321). The artist alone can know the ancient records and be like some
mystic courtier who has stolen the keys from the girdle of time and he is the
Creator of the standards of manners in their subtlety (Yeats, Poetry and Ireland
10); these standards being necessary for self-possession, which arises from
deliberate shaping of all things, and from never being swept away, whatever the
emotion, into confusion or dullness (Yeats, Poetry and Ireland 9 ). Drawing on
Kiberd, self-possession was a predisposition to freedom of mind and, consequently,
the freedom of the Irish nation personal liberation must precede national
recovery (Kiberd 124). The Irish self, according to Yeats, was supposed to be
created and shaped through truly good and noble art, which would be deliberately
crafted by the Artificers of the Great Moment (Yeats, Poetry and Ireland 18 ), and
through mastering the style a notion which Yeats understands in much broader

terms than is usually implied by the word (Kiberd 120). Poems such as the one
quoted above lacked these qualities professed by Yeats, who, therefore, struggled
to substitute for that melodrama a nobler form of art (Autobiographies 254). His
own movement actually continued in providing models which the Irish nation lacked,
but in a more profound and enduring way (Marcus 8 1).
Wanting to affect
peoples spirituality, Yeats, being a descendant of the middle class protestant
Ascendancy, could not stake upon Catholicism, as his friend Katharine Tynan did;
but he rather fell back upon esoteric symbolism as a direct communion with his
fellow countrymen and via Celtic Otherworldliness, by-passing the influence of
Catholicism by reaching out to what he supposed to be a more fundamental level of
their spirituality (Cairns, Richards 68 ). With the support of ,# who was named
the spiritual inspirer of the Irish Literary Movement (Graf 57 ), Yeats created a
kind of mystical nationalism which combined theosophy and paganism (Graf 53).
According to , paganism was the one and only true religion of the Irish, and thus
a force through which one could best strike the right note with the peoples
national identity; in his own words national sentiment seems out of date here [in
Ireland], the old heroism slumbers because alien thought and an exotic religion
have supplanted our true ideals and our natural spirituality (Russell Priest or
Hero). Paganism and fairy-lore is seen as something native, rooted deep in some
hereditary identity#:The faery tales have ever lain nearer to the hearts of the
people, and whatever there is of worth in song or story has woven into it the
imagery handed down from the dim druidic ages. (Russell, Priest and Hero)
However, Yeats was not interested in simply parroting old legends and folk tales;
therefore he shaped mythological material as he found suitable. National
literature, as he imagined it, could be created only by a free use of what was at
hand (Alspach 8 8 6); which meant that he was mingling old legends with other Celtic
elements, creating his own mystical Celtic Order and endowing it with individual
poetic beauty, in order to make it nobler art. In Irish literature on mythology
and folk beliefs whether written by Yeats and his circle, or by earlier writers
two leading themes can be discerned: the heroic and the transcendental. Both these
strains serve to build different values necessary for self-fashioning a national
identity. Heroic motifs would obviously give Ireland a history which a nation
desires to possess (OGrady, Selected Essays, 41) and break the widespread
commonplace that the Irish are a feminine race who have nothing masculine in the
character (Moran qtd. in Cairns, Richards 50). As was mentioned before, the heroic
aspect of legends breaches the undesirable aspects of Celticism (the alleged
subordinate femininity of the Celtic race); but, at the same time, the
supernatural, which abounds in the heroic age, would support the claim that the
Irish nation is metaphysical, artistic and connected to nature (the positive
qualities brought about by Celticism). Following OGradys legacy, mentioned in the
previous chapter, that Irish history is a downfall from a unified heroic age to
the contemporary fragmented nation (Whitaker 326), , too, exalted the heroic
character of Ancient Ireland:It has been so from the beginning, from the time of
the cursing of Tara, where the growing unity of the nations was split into
fractions, down to the present time. (Russell, Priest or Hero)With this
perspective, it was only natural for the nationalists to turn the attention of art
to motifs which would evoke ancient history. The very names of ancient heroes
became symbols of free Ireland which were supposed to stir the reader with their
power (Russell qud. in Williams 315) to name but a few, Cuchullain#, the main
hero-warrior of the Ulster cycle and according to the most complete ideal of
Gaelic chivalry (Russell, Imaginations and Reveries 30); the warrior and king
Fergus; the leader of the Fianna, Finn McCoill, and the members of the Fianna,
Oisn, Osgar, Caoilte, Goll; gods Lugh or Nauda, who in times of old were warriors
and heroes too. However, especially at the turn of the 20th century, the heroic
theme was more restricted to prose than to poetry OGradys multivolume Histories
of Ireland (18 7 9 -8 1), alongside Lady Gregorys Cchulainn Muirthemne (19 02) and
Gods and Fighting Men (19 04), are a fine example of the popularization of heroic
myths in prose. In poetry, though, heroic motifs are present (primarily through
Fergusons poems and translations), but later on in the 19 th century, the heroic

theme is almost always entwined with transcendental motifs. This can be noted in
Yeatss poetry in particular: his heroes always get, or try to get, to some other
level of being; perhaps experiencing a different kind of life to what they had
experienced before, whether through connection with supernatural powers, or, less
directly, through love, madness or wisdom. With Oisn and his journey to the land
of the Everliving, this transcendental theme is most obvious; but also in such
poems as Madness of King Goll, Fergus and the Druid or Cuchulains Fight with
the Sea, the warriors and kings are dealt with from a non-traditional perspective;
Yeats stresses a change that has come upon them, or perhaps they are depicted as
overcoming certain boundaries of their hitherto lives they are drifting like a
river / from change to change# (Fergus and the Druid 31-2). Yeats also combined
folk beliefs and fairy-lore with the ancient myths, dissolving the border between
what is considered a heroic legend and what living folklore; in the words of Edward
Hirsch:The contemporary (living) folklore of the Irish countryside and the ancient
Gaelic literature (revived by archaeologists and translators) served as dual
sources for a new Irish literature. It was Yeatss typical move to bring them
together. (Hirsch, Irish Peasant 1121)Yeats tried to stress both the
transcendental and heroic themes in mythology, intertwining various influences of
his predecessors; while taking from Ferguson his pleasure in heroic legend, from
Allingham and Walsh he took their passion for country spiritism (Yeats, Poetry
and Ireland 4). The theme of transcendence, side by side with the heroic theme,
served to provide the lacking models for the development of the national identity,
but in a less direct way instead of imitation, symbolism is the driving force
here. The turn of the 20th century was a transitory period in general and for
Ireland all the more writers were looking from the nineteenth century to the
coming times of the last century of a millennium (Campbell 10); and the very
depiction of transcendence in arts could symbolize the step the Irish people, as
individuals and as a nation, were about to take. In real life they were striving to
transcending the limits of life as it used to be, walking towards personal
liberation
and accordingly towards a complex national identity; and too, the transcendence of
Ireland as a province into Ireland as a self-conscious nation.
Interestingly,
Yeats and his literary circle displayed a tendency to push Irish people towards
mysticism by depicting them in a particular way: they started a process of turning
the peasants into a single figure of literary art (the peasant) (Hirsch, Irish
Peasant 1121); remaking the Catholic peasant into a noble peasant or a mystic
Celt (Cairns, Richards 67 ) was an act of transcendence, in which literature
becomes an act of mythic recovery (Hirsch, Hanrahan 8 8 2). Moreover, by making
peasants the essence of an ancient, dignified Irish culture, the Revivalists
created an image they could set against the English stereotype (Hirsch, Irish
Peasant 1121), and which would serve as a romantic symbol of Irish life being
anti-commercial, deep, pastoral and mystic (Hirsch, Irish Peasant 1122). This
peasant figure fabricated trough art was to become the audience of the art written
at that time a noble peasant in grey Connemara clothes (Fisherman 4).# In the
second half of the 19 th century, peasants were transcended into symbols, which were
supposed to serve as cornerstones to the Irish national identity. The poet was
creating myths through his art, which would carry presence beyond the borders of
harsh reality and thus, at the same time, recreate reality; Yeatss idea of a poet
was both as a solipsist and communal mythmaker (Hirsh, Hanrahan 8 8 2).
Moreover, Yeats believed that the Irish, having preserved a gift of vision
(Yeats, Introduction to Secret Rose, in Red Hanrahan 7 8 ), were still able to feel
and perceive as men in times of old could, when their souls were naked to the
winds of heaven (Yeats, Ideas of Good and Evil 51); thus possessing a character
which is closer to mystical transcendence than that of the more hurried and
successful nations (Yeats, Introduction to Secret Rose, Stories of Red Hanrahan
7 8 ). Plunging into mysticism in literature was parallel to looking into darkness;
and in Ireland, according to Yeats, this would be understood better than elsewhere:
No shining candelabra have prevented us from looking into the darkness, and when
one looks into the darkness there is always something there. (Yeats, Stories of Red

Hanrahan 7 8 )Therefore, when employing Celtic and mystical themes in his poetry,
Yeats was reaching out beyond the known reality, to find something there, make
his art even more transcendental, and at the same time available particularly to
the Irish nation. Art is transcendental itself (Campbell) culture of a nation
should transcend time. The poem which is perhaps the clearest manifestation of this
thought in the 18 9 0s is Apologia Addressed to Ireland in the Coming Days. # This
poem, written in 18 9 2, later became the closing poem of the 18 9 5 collection The
Rose, in which Yeats first combined nationalism and occultism (Parkinson 19 ); the
ancient Irish is blended here with the occult and cabbalistic.
The poem was
written as a manifesto of Yeatss ambition to become the Irish bard to be
accounted true brother of a company / that sang to sweeten Irelands wrong (2-3).
He places himself into the posteriority of the most famous Irish poets: Nor may I
less be counted one / With Davis, Mangan, Ferguson (17 -18 ). The poem is very
conscious of the role of art, which transcends time. Art, in general, links the
past and the coming times of the future; furthermore, having in mind the rebirth
of the Irish nation, it also brings back the beginnings of history of the world
which, even at that time, still contained Ireland (Campbell 13). Artists are those
who can sing of things discovered in the deep, / where only bodys laid asleep
(21-22), because of the power of art, which connects all, and which also transcends
reality; for it brings alive the supernatural in this world For elemental
creatures go / about my table to and fro (23-24). Art can, according to Yeats,
combine various strains of thought, such as the occult, folk and mythological the
elemental beings and wizard things are melded in one with faeries dancing
under moon and with druidic rites; as they all come out of the Anima Mundi, the
racial memory which stores all the experience and thought (Parkinson 10-11). Art
enables people to reach out into the Anima Mundi, understand and interpret it.
Moreover, adding a new occult dimension to the mythological and folk materials
Yeats was handling in his poetry enabled him to reach beyond nationality into
universality (Jeffares Commentary 47 ). In his essay Ireland and the Arts, Yeats
argues that arts in Ireland will find two passions ready to their hands, love of
the Unseen Life and love of country (Ideas of Good an Evil 322); which is a
principle Yeats adheres to in his own poetry, combining the Unseen Life with
roots in occultism as well as in folklore and nationalism. In the Apologia he
acclaims to continue writing poetry for the Irish cause, addressing the future
people of Ireland#:I cast my heart into my rhymes,That you in the dim coming times,
May know how my heart went with them After the red rose bordered hem. (45-48 )Art,
to be able to become great, must be personal; some actual man has to be perceived
in a beautiful piece of art (Ronsley 7 ). That is why Yeats must cast his heart
into his poems, often indiscernibly mingling the personal and the national (unlike
the propagandist poets of the age); this tendency of combining the national and the
personal in his poetry is typical of the collection following the Apologia The
Wind Among the Reeds (18 9 9 ), which can be considered the most Celtic, as for
imagery. The mentioned red rose bordered hem Yeats claims to follow in his poetry
alludes to the central symbol used in the whole collection The Rose. It is a vague
and complex symbol which combines physical and spiritual, pagan and Christian; it
was an important symbol in the Order of the Golden Dawn; in Irish folklore, Rose
was the name of a female personification of Ireland (Jeffares, Commentary 22-26).
Combining all these elements, the Rose became a mystical symbol for Yeats,
denoting spiritual and intellectual beauty, Ireland, love and perhaps inspiration.#
Transcendence in the art of Yeatss circle was manifested through themes
which dwell on the brink of the supernatural: poems dealing with the fairies and
their natural world, humans crossing to the Otherworld, with all the joy and sorrow
it may bring, fairies and old Celtic gods serving as guides of the souls of these
chosen humans; or often the transcendence can be of a less supernatural, but
nonetheless mystical, value achieving something, or perhaps reaching towards
ones higher self through love, wisdom, art and poetry. The purpose of these poems,
too, was supposed to become something new, special and transcendental which should
actually bring Ireland through her Great Moment (Yeats, Poetry and Ireland 18 )#;
as Yeats declared in his autobiographical Ireland after Parnell, Irish poetry was

supposed to be a manner at once cold and passionate, daring long premeditated act
and the Irish people, bitter beyond all the people of the world will get through
their art nearest to the honeyed comb (Autobiographies 255).3. Analytical part
3.1. Otherworld
As a result of art being considered a vehicle of transcendence of
the Irish nation, heading towards national consciousness, literature picked up from
mythology and folklore the very motifs of transcendence in order to stress the
idea. It can be claimed that poems drawing from mythology were to lead people into
the world of mythology, or perhaps the Otherworld, and thus create the feeling of
adherence to an ancient nation; the transcendence being literal and metaphorical at
the same time.
One of the most transcendental motifs that can be found in Irish
literature is the Otherworld. It is hard to characterize the conception of the
Otherworld among Celts; and the interpretations of it in literature vary even more.
There is no doubt that Celts believed in life after death (MacCana 123) and the
Otherworld is sometimes interpreted as the Elysian Fields, subsuming the land of
the dead (MacKillop). However, more commonly it is seen as the realm of ancient
gods the Thuata D Danann, or Tribes of the goddess Danu, who, according to the
11th century manuscript Book of Invasions, used to inhabit Ireland before they were
defeated by the mortals and consequently withdrew to the Otherworld. This world
transcends limitations of human time as well as spatial definition (MacCana
124); and therefore the term Otherworld is rather vague and can be understood in
many ways. Sometimes it is interpreted as a physical place, situated beyond the
Western sea, as an underwater land, or a domain within hills or mounds so called
fairy raths (MacCana 124; Bramsbck 48 ). Sometimes, on the other hand, it is a
realm beyond senses (MacKillop), a world existing beyond our immediate reality,
but contiguous with our world a kind of alternative parallel reality, where
deities, fairies and beloved dead dwell (Monaghan, Introduction 13; 37 0). It may
reach into our world as a house appearing and disappearing suddenly# (MacCana 124)
or as the aforementioned fairy mounds, which are often considered to be portals
into this alternative reality (Monagham 17 6,17 7 ). But whether as a physical place,
or a realm coexisting with this world, but beyond our senses, the Otherworld is a
realm of eternal bliss, peace, and plenitude, where death or old age do not enter:
It is the country is most delightful of all that are under the sun; the trees are
stooping down with fruit and with leaves and with blossom. Honey and wine are
plentiful there, and everything the eye
has ever seen; no wasting will come on you with the wasting away of time; you will
never see death or lessening. (Lady Gregory 28 9 )The blissful character of eternal
beauty is emphasised in the other common names used for the Otherworld Tr-na-nog, meaning country of the Young (Yeats, Fairy and Folk Tales 19 7 ) or The Land of
the Living.# Also, Tr-na-n- og was in the popular culture of the 19 th century
sometimes identified with mythological sites Mag Mall (Gaelic for plain of
delight), where life is endlessly joyous and sweet (Monaghan 308 ) or Hy Brasil,
a magical island in the West:On the ocean that hollows the rocks where ye dwell,A
shadowy isle has appeared, as they tell; Men thought it a region of sunshine and
rest,And they called it Hy- Brasail, the isle of the blest. (Griffin, Hy-Brasil
The Isle of the Blest2, ll. 1-4 in Fairy and Folk Tales 209 )The Otherworld is
seen as a part of Ireland, where, according to Yeatss essay Irish Folklore,
Legend and Myth, this world and the other are not widely sundered (Writings on
Folklore 58 ). This view emphasises Irelands picture as a nation possessing a
transcendental character; they are a metaphysical people, in comparison with the
practical English.
In Yeatss work particularly, one other theme concerning
the Otherworld repeatedly appears. Immortal love is depicted as inseparable from
the Otherworld,Where people love beside the ravelled seas;That Time can never mar a
lovers wowsUnder that woven changeless roof of boughs. (The Man who Dreamt of
Faeryland 9 -12)Perhaps the importance of this theme is caused by the frustrations
of Yeatss personal love life with Maud Gonne; unable to find love in the real
world of mortals, he views the Otherworld as a place to gain it as can be seen in
the following verses from a poem written for Maud, titled The White Birds: I am
haunted by numberless islands, and many a Danaan# shore,Where Time would surely
forget us, and Sorrow come near us no more; (9 -10)Frustrated by his unrequited

love, he endows his heroes with his own desire for immortal love they seek the
love that the gods give and which is the soft fire / That shall burn time when
times have ebbed away (Yeats, The Shadowy Waters 19 ); often the mortal heroes who
enter the Otherworld are taken there by their fairy lover, which is acommon motif
in Irish mythology and folklore generally, and not being restricted only to Yeatss
work.#3.1.1. Otherworld as a physical place
In Yeatss work, both conceptions
of the Otherworld appear. The Otherworld as a physical place is generally depicted
in voyage literature as far away islands in the west (Bramsbck 48 , Mac Cana 124)
and perhaps the most typical mythological story of this kind served as a template
for one of Yeatss first famous poems The Wanderings of Oisn, which depicts
Oisns journey to Tr-na-nOg. Oisn was the son of Finn, the central character of
the Fenian cycle, who entered the Otherworld by becoming the lover and husband of
Niamh, one of the Ever-living who fell in love with him.# Having spent some time in
the untroubled land (in fact three hundred years, but this he does not know), but
still not finding what he was looking for, he returns to Ireland to find everything
changed and the heroic age gone. Here he recounts his journey to the Otherworld to
St. Patrick and from the dialogue the reader learns much about Tr-na-nOg. Yeats
creates the otherworldly feeling through appealing to senses by the use of
colourful images. According to Cairns and Richards, he uses colours to evoke moods
with a repetitiveness which seems almost didactic (67 ) and thus he creates a world
about which Forest Reid claims nearly 30 years later: It quite frankly has nothing
to give, but its beauty, and that beauty is apagan and sensuous beauty: its
ethical, its moral significance is absolutely nil. (36)
The other voyage story
in Yeatss work which is depicting mortals in pursuit of the Otherworld is dramatic
The Shadowy Waters, a play whose first drafts reach back into the early 18 8 0s,
with many revisions until the final Acting Version from year 19 11 (Bramsbck 30).
The first published version, a dramatic poem printed out as a book in 19 00, will be
dealt with in this work, as it is closest of all versions to Yeatss early poetics.
The main mortal hero Forgael is also searching the seas in hope of finding the
Otherworld, which he assumes to be his destiny, after it has appeared to him as a
vision in a dream. The story of Forgael displays just his unyielding desire
another motif strongly connected to transcendental themes in Yeatss poetry and
he never reaches the Otherworld; the play ends in his aspirations for an endless
search, while the reader never gets a direct picture of what he is searching for.
However, in The Wanderings of Oisin, the Otherworld is described in detail
the three parts of the poem correspond to the three Islands of the Otherworld.
Traditionally, in mythology three was supposed to be a powerful number
(Monaghan 447 ) and it is used in folklore with magical connotations. Yeats, in his
compilation of Irish fairy tales, describes Tr-na-nOg as triple the island of
the living, the Island of victories and the underwater land (Yeats, Fairy and Folk
Tales 19 7 ). The sources of Yeatss version of the legend were mainly translations
of two poems written in Gaelic: the traditional form of the legend the 12th
century Colloquy of Old Men, which is a dialogue between St. Patrick, Oisn and yet
another hero Caoilte, both of whom, owing to their adventures in the Otherworld,
survived to the Christian era, creating a mood of nostalgic recollection of past
glories (MacCana 106); yet even a greater source of borrowings the framework of
the poem as well as certain motifs and images was Michael Comyns 18 th century
Gaelic poem The Lay of Oisn on the Land of Youth (Alspach 8 49 -8 53). One of the
major alternations Yeats made in his version of the legend is the triple vision of
the Otherworld in Comyns version the third island is missing. (Alspach 8 51).
Yeats made his hero go to three islands first the Island of the Living (or the
Island of Youth), which is a traditional Elysian blissful Otherworld, where
tangled creepers every hour / blossom in some new crimson flower and joy and
beauty are everlasting:And here there is no Change, nor Death,But only kind and
merry breathFor joy is God and God is joy. (Book I, 28 4-6)The next island Oisn and
Niamh visit is the Island of Dancing and Victories. Oisn spends the next hundred
years in battle and feasting on this island they encounter a chained maiden and a
demon who holds her captive. Oisn fights him for a day, rests and feasts for the
next four days until the fourth morn saw emerge / his new-healed shape (II, 220-

21), causing their life on this island to be with no dreams nor fears / nor
languor or fatigue: an endless feast / an endless war (II, 222-25). The everrising demon can symbolize patterns of history and cycles of life in general; a
theme never too old for Yeats to explore. However, in the 19 th century the chained
maiden could have alluded to the subdued Ireland, which, having actually been named
after the female goddess riu (160), was often personified as a maiden; in this
poem, it would be the maiden in need claiming:And I must needs endure and hate and
weep,Until the gods and demons drop asleep,Hearing Aedh touch the mournful string
of gold. (Book II, 8 5-7 )Aedh is a name common in Celtic mythology, but in this poem
it probably refers to the god of death, whose harp brings death to anyone who hears
him play (Jeffares, Commentary 524).# Later, in the collection The Wind Among the
Reeds, Yeats uses the name Aedh as his poetic alter ego, a principle of mind, as
he calls him (The Wind Among the Reeds 7 3), and the poetic persona speaking through
many of his poems in The Wind Among the Reeds.# The last verse: Hearing Aedh touch
the mournful string of gold, can, therefore, imply the power of a bard to change
things and transcend the power of gods and demons; if the maiden is seen as Ireland
suffering hardship, the verse could refer to the power of poetry and art to create
the new and free Ireland.
The last Island of Yeatss Otherworld depicted in The
Wanderings of Oisin is the Island of Forgetfulness the part missing from Comyns
original, and added by Yeats. On this island, whose atmosphere, with its spacious
woods and dripping trees, is probably most uncanny of all the islands, the
lovers encounter a monstrous slumbering folk (Book III, 27 ). These are sleeping
giants with faces alive with such beauty (III, 51), curiously possessing some
bird features. In this part of the book, Yeats probably made use of the popular
legend about heroes sleeping in a cave, which he was doubtlessly familiar with; he
actually incorporated into his compilation of Irish fairy tales of 18 8 8 a story
The Giants Stairs in which a young man discovers sleeping giants in a cave.#
Oisn and Niamh fall asleep as well,# and in their dream, kings of old, heroes, and
demons are driving the dust with their throngs; here Yeats might be, once again,
touching upon the issue of art and inspiration in general Oisn was characterized
as the warrior-bard in the Fianna (OGrady Selected Essays 109 ; italics added).
Otherworldly dreams Oisn is dreaming bring him nearer to the heroes and characters
from the legendary past; in the same way otherworldly visions endow the poet with
inspiration from legends and myths. They spent there another hundred years,
sleeping in a mystical dreamy atmosphere:So lived I and lived not, so wrought I and
wrought not, with creatures of dreams,In a long iron sleep as a fish in the water
goes dumb as a stone.# (Book III, 9 5-6) The form of the poem dialogue of Oisn
and St.
Patrick and the first person narration makes the depiction of the Otherworld
much more personal and credible; thus avoiding a mere narrative description, but
presenting a clash of the mythical pagan world and the Christian Ireland of the 5th
century which can be also seen as a clash of ones dreams and memories with
reality. This gives the poem a more individual voice and the hero is pursued by a
modernistic feeling of alienation and estrangement from the community in which he
lives. According to David Dwan, he is not the last representative of an epic
integrity, but is the living embodiment of its demise (Ancient Sect 209 ), which,
perhaps, enables easier identification of the hero with the Irish reader, who, too,
is estranged from their country and community by not having a conscious national
identity and not feeling pertinence to the Irish nation. The epic tale of The
Wanderings of Oisin is interwoven with lyrical feelings of solitude and unfulfilled
desire; in the second part of the poem, when Oisn grows homesick at leaving the
Island of Dancing and Victories, he asks his fairy lover:And which of these Is the
Island of Content?None know, she said;And on my bosom laid her weeping head.
(Book II, 248 -250)
From The Wanderings of Oisin, and from other poems dealing
with the Otherworld, it can be clearly seen that the motif of an island is one of
the most important motifs constituting the image of the Otherworld in Yeatss
poetry. There is something mystical about islands, as they emerge from either a
lake or the sea, both of which often hide an unknown world underneath.# They are
detached from the land and the mundane reality in one poem Yeats describes the

Fairyland to be upon a woven world-forgotten isle (Man who dreamt of Faeryland

8 ). In mythology and folklore islands in general are often seen as liminal places
(Monaghan 264), which means that they belong neither quite to the Otherworld, nor
to our world; they are points of contact between the worlds, and, thus, were
extremely important in myths and rituals of the Celts (Monaghan 28 9 ). Yeats also
views islands as places of refuge, which gives them even more otherworldly
qualities; since the Otherworld is seen as the ultimate retreat where, if chosen,
one can fly before sickness, death or change. In a letter to Katrine Tynan he wrote
that in his semi-autobiographical novel John Sherman he made one of his characters
always seek refuge and peace on a little island living there alone whenever he
felt troubled; which was also, as a matter of fact, a dream of the young Yeats
himself (Jeffares Commentary 34). On wild islands one could see what lay hidden in
himself (Yeats, The Cutting of an Agate 17 6), which makes it asymbol of inner
transcendence.#
Moreover, Ireland itself being an island, this otherworldly motif
has a special place among mythological motifs which were supposed to create the
national consciousness on certain levels it implicitly identifies the vision of
Ireland with the Otherworld; thus creating an imaginary vision of Ireland, which
people could cling to as to an ideal, where wondrous stories are set, and where all
is possible. Yeats believed that these stories and images once created and
associated with river and mountain will work as aunifying force and deepen the
political passion of the nation that all, artist and poet, craftsman and daylabourer would accept a common design# (Autobiographies 240).
Islands play a
crucial role in Yeatss early poetry in general; in his perhaps most quoted early
poem The Lake Island of Innisfree, an island is the central motif, which comes to
be seen as a retreat from the commercial world to the world of natural beauty; and
although in this poem it is a real existing island from Yeatss childhood, it is
described in a rather otherworldly manner, and possesses certain attributes which
are, in Yeatss poetry, usually connected to the Otherworld:And I shall have some
peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,Dropping from the veils of the morning,
to where the cricket sings;There midnights all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of linnets wings. (5-9 )It is described as a place of peace, which
soothes the poets soul, and might invoke the feeling of timeless bliss. But more
interestingly, Yeats is using the very same motifs which are recurring in his
writing on the Otherworld:# drops (and generally the sound of dripping) this
motif keeps iterating throughout The Wanderings of Oisin; curious light which
creates an unearthly shimmering impression midnights glimmer and noons
purple glow; the linnets wings the motif of birds carries a lot of
transcendental value; and veils of the morning a veil of mist can conceal the
unknown or it can be a passage which is yet to be drawn aside.
Seeing Otherworld
as an island usually entails the motif of crossing water. The original classic
voyage to the Otherworld in Irish literature is a Gaelic poem The Voyage of Bran
composed in the late 7 th or 8 th century (Mac Cana 7 2; OCL 257 ), which established
Bran as the perhaps most famous sailor in Irish literature. In Yeatss work,
crossing the sea plays a major role both in The Shadowy Waters# as in The
Wanderings of Oisin. In the former, water is depicted as shadowy, misty (26),
cloudy (46), empty (32), waste (45), (though Forgael knows there is something
awaiting him) throughout the play; in the latter, the sea gets more hostile
gradually: Oisn and Niamh galloped over the glossy sea (I, 132) in the first
book, whereas in the third book there was foam underneath us, and round us,
wandering and milky smoke (III, 1). The hostility and haziness of the waters the
heroes have to cross to get to the Otherworld stresses the immediate
unattainability of what they are reaching for. In his notes to The Wind Among the
Reeds, Yeats himself says that the sea can be described as a symbol of the
drifting indefinite bitterness of life and that he believes there is like
symbolism intended in the many Irish voyages to the islands of enchantment (Yeats,
Notes to The Wind Among the Reeds 9 0). In modern times, crossing the sea may be
interpreted as overcoming the bitterness of the era Ireland was in.
Crossing the sea is depicted as timeless the sailors on the ship are losing
count of time and Oisn claims twice he does not know if days / or hours passed

by (19 -20). Interestingly, in both works there is a Christian motif of walking

over the water, which points out to the omnipotence of the otherworldly beings,
linking the Celtic Otherworld to Christian symbolism Niamhs horse gallops over
the sea; and in The Shadowy Waters, the sailors claim that something that was
bearded like agoat / Walked on the waters (14) and bid their captain Forgael look
for the Otherworld.#
According to James Lovic Allen, crossing the water is a
predominant journey pattern especially in connection to a trip to a paradiselike isle or shore, which is Eden-like in certain respects (Allen 9 4). The
Otherworld, and everything it can stand for outside the world of mythology, is
somewhere beyond reach; and the water is a metaphoric division between the reality
and the stage whatever it may be to which the character, the poet, the reader,
and perhaps the whole nation are attempting to transcend. In The Shadowy Waters,
Forgael is sailing across misty seas to seek / His heart's desire where the world
dwindles out (14) the water being the barrier between his desire and the
reality. When he speaks about his discontent with the real world and earthly love,
he even uses the motif of water to express the distance he feels towards mortal
women: When Ihold / A woman in my arms, she sinks away / As though the waters had
flowed up between (The Shadowy Waters 19 ). The motif of a journey in Yeatss work
is the archetypal, mythic, or ritual journey, emblematic of man's course through
life toward some ideal or transcendent goal (Allen 9 3) and crossing water seems to
symbolize overcoming the barrier which hinders the move to a next stage;# whether
for an individual, or for the whole nation and its consciousness. 3.1.2. Otherworld
as a realm beyond senses
Often in Yeatss work, the Otherworld is seen as a
parallel co-existing reality which ordinary mortals cannot perceive. There are,
however, points of exchange between the two worlds whether geographical sites,
such as fairy mounds, islands, bogs or lakes; or temporal instances of liminality,
mostly twilight, dawn or certain days of the year (Monaghan 28 9 ). Not
surprisingly, the motif of twilight is very frequent in Yeatss poetry of the 19 th
century; knowing that twilight was often seen as a touch point between the two
worlds, the motif gives his poetry an otherworldly hue in general:Out-worn heart,
in a time out-worn, Come clear of the nets of wrong and right; Laugh heart again in
the gray twilight, Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn. (Into the Twilight
1-4)The above quoted excerpt comes from the poem Into the Twilight, in which the
poetic persona, being tired and out-worn in time, seems to be seeking refuge in
an otherworldly reality, although the Otherworld itself is not mentioned throughout
the poem. He is talking about Ireland in general, but it is a mystical Ireland,
governed by nature; it is a place where the mystical brotherhood / Of sun and moon
and hollow and wood / And river and stream work out their will (10-12). Therefore
Yeats creates an illusion in his poems that there are two Irelands the world of
the mortals and the mystical brotherhood behind it.
This mystical world can
be entered through some of the aforementioned liminal places, in folklore mostly
the fairy raths; or just simply through being granted insight (MacCana 124).
Usually one can enter only when they are
chosen specially selected human beings whose destiny is the Otherworld
(Bramsback 47 ). The notion of being chosen is a tricky one even though the
Otherworld is described as a world of bliss, to mortals it seems strange and
unknown and they usually do not want to be chosen; it is the fairies and
inhabitants of the Otherworld who do the choosing, often against the will of the
mortals. Sometimes the person who is taken away to the Otherworld dies in the world
of the mortals in The Celtic Twilight, Yeats retells a story of a beautiful
woman, Mary Hynes, who died young because the gods loved her (45); or they might
turn crazy they are at times away, as it is called, know all things, but are
afraid to speak. (Notes to The Wind Among the Reeds 67 ). The theme of a conflict
between the Otherworld and the world of mortals is dealt with in a play by Yeats,
first staged in 18 9 4, The Land of Hearts Desire.# It is a work based on one of the
most common folklore themes, in which Yeats grasps the essence of Irish imagination
(Bransback 46, 59 ). On May Eve,# a day of supernatural powers in folk tradition, a
fairy child tempts a newly wed bride, Mary, to renounce the mortal world where she
will grow like the rest; / Bear children, cook, be mindful to the churn (29 ) and

go with her, instead, to the Land of Heart's Desire,Where beauty has no ebb,
decay no flood, But joy is wisdom, Time an endless song. (28 )The Otherworld is
described as blissfully as may be, with the always recurring motifs of beauty, joy,
endlessness, dance, the merrier multitude (28 ) of divine beings; which are all
motifs used also in The Wanderings of Oisin to describe the Island of the Living.
In opposition to this, Yeats sets a world of drudgery and misery (Bramsbck 69 ),
which does not allow dreaming for, in the words of the priest, ancient legends
Mary likes to read are but foolish dreams with gloomy prospects of growing old
and bitter of tongue (29 ). Further, the latter world is expressed in words that
evoke the ordinariness of the life Mary lives, such as butter, eggs, fowl,
churn. If she does not leave for the Land of Hearts Desire, she will grow
like the rest emphasising the lack of possibilities in the mortal world to
transcend ones own conditions; losing any kind of individuality and just melding
with the rest. However, no matter how beautiful the Otherworld is, the fairy
child who is offering its beauties to Mary is depicted, in opposition to the
priest, as the antagonist of the play, who tricks her way into the favour of the
family. Therefore, she is able to lay her charms on Mary, so that she wastes away,
dying in the mortal world, only to be led away into the the woods and waters and
pale lights (30); the combination of these three motifs paleness, trees and
water often constitute Yeatss vision of the Otherworld. Mary herself dreads and
longs for the Otherworld (Bramsbck 59 ); although from the very beginning of the
play she desires to dance / Deep in the dewy shadow of a wood (8 ), she still
longs to stay with her husband, whom she loves greatly, and she still clings to
mortal hope (30). The Otherworld is in its essence absolutely non-human, and the
ambivalent attitude of most of the humans towards it stems from not being able to
understand it and to identify with its inhabitants; for example, the pastime in the
Otherworld is described in ways which cannot be associated with anything human:Yet
I could make you ride upon the winds,#Run on the top of the dishevelled tide,#And
dance upon the mountains like a flame. (26)The winds, tide, mountains and
flame represent all the elements; the natural setting and the dynamic verbs used,
such as ride, run and dance, create the notion that the inhabitants of the
Otherworld not only belong to the natural world, but are personifications and
manifestations of the elements themselves; or perhaps incarnations of boundless
passions, which is somewhat at odds with the milder human ways of seeing life.#
The reader, or the audience, may feel ambivalent about the ending; and so
does Mary there is an and yet in her decision to leave into the fairy world: I
always loved her worldand yetand yet (31)The non-articulated doubts expressed
by the dying young woman carry their emotional impact and strength in not being
specified. Mary dies without revealing what she actually wants, and the focus of
the play stays with the family; the reader, or the audience, do not follow Marys
journey to the Otherworld. This way, the veil is not drawn, and the Otherworld
remains mysterious. All the reader gets is the description made by the fairy child,
and an insight provided through Marys daydreaming. The blissful depiction of the
Otherworld as a heavenly place of many delights is at odds with Marys
unwillingness, or even fear, to obey the tempting powers of the Fairyland. Yet even
more so, when the reader realizes that it is Mary herself who evoked these powers;
not only is she courteous to them (10) spreading primroses, in front of the
door, and giving them milk and fire,# but she invokes them directly, calling them,
moreover, by the expression faeries:# Come, faeries, take me out of this dull
house! / Let me have all the freedom I have lost (15). The Otherworld, depicted
through descriptions of great beauty, is a stage to which one should aspire; and
the fact that the Otherworld is deeply rooted in Marys own self the child lays
her claims on Mary using the words: I keep you in the name of your own heart
even emphasizes the idea that everyone has their own Otherworld to which they might
aspire. Yet the play also depicts human fear of transcending their own
possibilities and the conflict between desire and fear.
Whereas the Otherworld
conceived as a physical place is usually described by the mortal visitors, such as
Oisn, the Otherworld conceived as an alternative reality is depicted through the
eyes of the inhabitants of the Otherworld mostly fairies, especially in

literature based on folk beliefs. It is so in The Land of Hearts Desire, where the
fairy child is tempting Mary and describing the bliss of the world with the
greatest possible beauty, but also in one of Yeatss earliest poems, The Stolen
Child, dating back to 18 8 6. The addressee of the first three stanzas is a child,
lured from the human world by fairies. They describe nature and their life,
depicting, in beautiful images, what he would gain if he went with them to the
waters and the wild (10). The last stanza forms a contrast by showing what he
lost, having gone off with them. Some of Yeatss early poetry was criticised as
attempts to deny civilization and its discontents by escaping to the Happy Island
of Oisn or Tr na nOg (Kiberd 103), but in this poem, as in The Land of Hearts
Desire, the Otherworld is not presented as an ultimate solution which would be
undoubtedly positive, because the reader can realize what the stolen child and
Mary have to renounce the latter losing her mortal love and the possibility to
watch the turf smoke coiling from the fire / And feel content and wisdom in your
heart (13); and the stolen child missing forever the peaceful cosy atmosphere of
a mortal home.
Unlike The Land of Hearts Desire, where the tension is created
by the fairies having an adversary, such as the priest or the Bruin family, in The
Stolen Child, the conflict is wound around the depiction of two worlds, both of
which are appealing in unique ways:Where dips the rocky highlandOf Sleuth Wood in
the lake,There lies a leafy islandWhere flapping herons wake The drowsy water rats;
(lines 1-5)Hell hear no more the lowing Of the calves on the warm hillsideOr the
kettle on the hobSing peace into his breast,Or see the brown mice bobRound and
round the oatmeal chest. (lines 44-49 )Here the two worlds are not set against each
other as in The Land of Hearts Desire, but they overlap and co-exist in symbiosis.
Still, they create a tension, expressed by a set of dichotomies. The basic obvious
dichotomy of human vs. fairy incorporates other dichotomies the most evident is
woods vs. the house with all its human details as the kettle or the oatmeal
chest. For the fairies, nature is their home; they live where dips the rocky
highland of Sleuthwood in the lake, on the leafy island, or in the hills above
Glen-car (line 29 ). This dichotomy, setting the house and the woods in opposition,
can be noticed in The Land of Hearts Desire too, where the Bruins house is seen
as a safe place of simple peace, whereas the world behind the door poses a threat,
and the woods are obviously the abode of the fairies.# It is worth noticing that
when describing the nature which encloses the Otherworld, Yeats uses names of
concrete places in Ireland. This has a few reasons: firstly, the Revivalists saw
Western Ireland as the repository of Gaelic values (Allison 61); by using
concrete places Yeats stresses the Gaelic otherworldliness, but makes it more
accessible and imaginable for people; secondly, he sees these points as meeting
places, locations of cultural unity and energy, regenerative sources for his
imagination and for the nation at large (Allison 56); thirdly, these concrete
places are meeting points of imagination and reality and by attributing
otherworldly values to these real places, Yeats is implicitly shoving Ireland
towards transcendence individual as well as national and towards the mentioned
cultural unity, which was, at that stage, still the imagined ideal; and fourthly,
some of these places carry otherworldly connotations by themselves they are
ancient mythological sites or places mysterious in folk imagination and merely
mentioning is enough to create associations concerning fairies or ancient gods.#
Therefore the nature of the
Otherworld is the real nature of Ireland itself.
The above mentioned contrast
is also connected to the dichotomy of wildness vs. domestication: animals mentioned
in the first part are herons, water-rats and trout# whereas in the last
stanza it is calves, which are tamed animals, and mice, animals often living
among people. The fairy world clearly favours freedom, symbolized, among other
things, by the animals mentioned; in contrast to people who are constrained by the
world full of troubles (line 22).
Another interesting dichotomy is chill
vs. warmth. The coldness of the fairy world# comes from the strong presence of
water in this world; dew, lakes, streams are everywhere: wandering water gushes
(28 ), ferns that drop their tears (line 36). Even the dim grey sands (line 14)
in the moonlight seem moist and cold. Water is seen by Yeats as something

singularly Irish in The Celtic Twilight he claims that the water, the water of
the seas and of lakes and of mist and rain, has all but made the Irish after its
image (135); the Irish, living in a moist and rainy climate, got formed by their
environment and water is one of the constituents of their identity. Therefore, it
is but natural that the Otherworld oozes with water, which makes the Irish people
associate themselves with it. The motif of dew is also often connected to the
Otherworld in The Land of Hearts Desire, Mary wishes to dance deep in the dewy
shadow of a wood (8 ) and this adds to the chilly impression.# Contrasted to this,
the fourth stanza depicts the warmth of the human world with the warm hillside
and the boiling water in the kettle. The chill in the wet wild nature also brings
about a kind of unquietness vs. peacefulness of the childs house, where the kettle
sings peace into his breast (47 ). The fairies dance all night, and seem always in
motion; unquiet dreams (34) are mentioned; the water is wandering (28 ); and
even moonlight, which is usually something constant, comes in waves (14). Dance
is an important motif connected to the Otherworld fairies never get tired of
dancing (The Celtic Twilight 130). Generally, this unquietness, which is disturbing
for the mortals, may be caused by the impression of constant motion; which can be
also noted in other poems, especially in The Unappeasable Host.
Still, the
fairies possess a wonderful mysterious beauty, as opposed to the meekness of the
human life; establishing another dichotomy, aestheticism vs. ordinariness. The
images and colours are more exotic (reddest stolen cherries [italics added] (8 ),
pools that scarce could bathe a star (31), ferns that drop their tears (36)),
in comparison with the ordinariness of the images in the last stanza (brown mice
[italics added] (48 ), oatmeal chest (49 ), kettle on the hob (46)). There is a
strong aesthetic aspect about the Otherworld, which can send chills down the spine:
Where the wave of moonlight glosses / the dim grey sands with light (lines 1314). The last, but not least, important dichotomy, portrayed in this poem is
abstract vs. concrete. The first three stanzas are much more vague and dreamy,
while the last one is filled with little concrete details. The fairies mingling
hands and mingling glances (line 18 ) is not a still image and presents the reader
with difficulty of imagining it; it is a motion and a vague fleeing moment. The
fairy world might be beautiful, but it is essentially empty for mortals. The verses
to and fro we leap / and chase the frothy bubbles (lines 20-21) probably express
best the vagueness and dreaminess of the fairy world. The motifs of froth and
bubbles invoke the feeling of something being hollow and unreal, as if the
fairies were chasing just after an illusion which is not real. Also, the motif of
rushes surrounding the pools where the fairies live (line 30) supports the theme of
the fairy-realms emptiness rushes are hollow from within. The abstractness is
stressed by the distance and inaccessibility of the Otherworld. It is far off, by
furthest Rosses [italics added] (15); the repetition of far moves the realm
beyond human reach and gives it a fairytale-like quality. The appeal of the refrain
uses just the words come away (line 9 ), leaving the away dreamy, abstract, and
unearthly, beyond the scope of human understanding. Abstraction is the main feature
of the Otherworld it creates the hazy impression, and, thus, stresses the
transcendental value of a dream that is to be achieved. Moreover, Celticism saw
abstraction as one of the stereotypical characteristics of the Celtic nations, and,
therefore, depicting the Otherworld behind this misty veil of abstraction yet even
more stresses its Celtic singularity. One of the most famous Celticists, Ernest
Renan, quoted by Yeats in his essay The Celtic Element in Literature claims that
the Celtic race has worn itself out on mistaking dreams for realities (qtd. in
Yeats 19 03, 27 0)# a prose image which corresponds to the poetic image of chasing
frothy bubbles (21).
The poem is told from the perspective of the fairies, so
the Otherworld is presented initially as the ideal solution to escape troubles. The
reader, however, has got a human perspective and reading the poem written in the
first person from the point of view of fairies creates tension in them; and the
reader moves on the brink of the real and supernatural. The poem itself, therefore,
is a point of liminality; works like this were supposed to be the doors to the
realm beyond earthly senses, carrying the reader off to the Otherworld. 3.1.3.
General motifs in the poetry on the Otherworld Having described the Otherworld in

Yeatss work, next it would be suitable to point out a few recurring motifs which
constitute Yeatss depiction of the Otherworld generally, whether it is seen as a
physical place or a realm beyond senses. The presence of peculiar light in
combination with various colours is perhaps one of the most powerful tools for
Yeats to create an unearthly impression. Yeats distinguished between the red flare
of dreams and the common light of common hours (The Land of Hearts Desire 9 ).
This peculiar light can be created through the aforementioned twilight, or by using
verbs and adjectives which imply any sort of shimmering and glossing wave of
moonlight glosses (Stolen Child 13), glimmering waves (The Wanderings of Oisin
I, 314), midnights glimmer (The Lake Isle of Inishfree 7 ), gleaming bodies
(The Wanderings of Oisin III, 28 ), golden or silver skies (The Man who Dreamt
of Faeryland 21), softness came from the starlight (The Wanderings of Oisin III,
7 2). Images filled with this otherworldly light evoke the impression of perfect
beauty and the reader may thus feel the power of the Otherworld. Forest Reid argues
though originally the comment was meant to describe Yeatss prose, it may be well
applied to some of his poems too that through the dark atmosphere flame wild
unearthly lights that lure the soul to its destruction (Reid 132). He uses
uncommon descriptions, similes and metaphors to carry the reader off to the
Otherworld, as their unusualness strikes the readers senses; such as drops of
frozen rainbow light (The Wanderings of Oisin I, 18 4) or the pale blossom of the
moon (The Wanderings of Oisin I, 28 8 ). In the former the combination of the motifs
of drops, cold, colours, and light implied in the simile creates a mysterious
beauty; whereas in the latter the word blossom bestows the moonlight with a sense
of flourishing, fragrance, and unearthly glamour.#
Another motif closely
associated with the Otherworld is the sound of dripping, or drops in general. When
Oisn and Niamh arrive to the Island of Forgetfulness, they hear dropping,
murmurous dropping; silence and that one sound (III, 18 ). The monotony of the
dripping may be soothing to the soul peace comes dropping slow [italics added]
(Innisfree, line 5). Hearing water dripping from the depths of the forest might
create a mysterious atmosphere, and seem magical, especially when it is combined
with a personification like the following: Leaning softly out / from ferns that
drop their tears / over the young streams (35-7 ). Perhaps the sound of dripping
is also used because of the Irish rainy weather yet another way how to
distinguish the Otherworld as particularly Irish; and at the same time, by drawing
corresponding links between Ireland and the happy Otherworld, Yeats is embellishing
the vision of Ireland and making it beautiful in the memory (Yeats
Autobiographies 126).
Related to the drops, dew is perhaps the most common motif
in early Yeatss poetry as such, especially in The Wind Among the Reeds. In his
descriptions of the Otherworld, this motif appears over and over, completing the
image of wet cold shimmering beauty; on the Island of the Living, Oisn and Niamh
walk through shadowy ways / Where drops of dew in myriads fall (221-22); and in
The Land of Hearts Desire the Fairyland is told to be deep in the dewy shadow of
a wood (8 ). There is something magical about dew; it is water that appears every
morning on the leaves and grass without any obvious reason such as rain this
might have been seen as somewhat supernatural in the past. Moreover, occult
practices consider dew an important element in alchemy it is a component related
to the subtle form of the fire of nature (Greer 132); all these connotations were
probably known to Yeats and were made use of to create the Otherworldly character
of his poems.# He often combined the motif of dew, and all its magical
connotations, with the other transcendental motifs, in order to strengthen the
mysticism of his images: with the liminal twilight, to stress the vagueness between
the two worlds, as in dew ever shining and twilight grey; and to reach beyond the
earthiness,
he uses expressions as dew-drowned stars by creating a link between dew and
something as unreachable as stars, Yeats draws the unattainable far away stars
closer to our world, and, at the same time, it gives a yet even more transcendental
value to dew.
The last of the frequent motifs linked to the Otherworld in
Yeatss work which will be given attention to, is that of birds. In his work around
19 00 a wide variety of birds can be found, to which he attributes different

symbolism (Bramsbck 8 5). Birds had an important place in Irish mythology and
folklore they were often companions of goddesses, either as sinister, death
foreboding images, or as messengers of joy (Monaghan 46); the famous love god
Aengus was closely associated closely with birds.# In folklore a motif of a
transformation of a soul into a white bird at the moment of death was common
(Bramsbck 8 6); this idea was used in The Land of Hearts Desire, where Marys soul
transforms into a bird as she dies. The Faery Child luring her, she is repeatedly
referring to Mary as: White bird, white bird, come with me, little bird (31).#
Yeats was aware of the cultural meanings attributed to birds, finding evidence in
the oral lore of country people or in older Gaelic literature (Bramsbck 8 5). The
connection to the Otherworld is obvious either through the association with gods,
or through the transcendental motif of the transformation of a soul into a bird. In
The Shadowy Waters, grey birds, which are men who died, serve as good pilots,
calling from wind to wind (21), showing him the way to the Otherworld. Birds are
also the first creatures which Oisn and Niamh behold as they approach the
Otherworld round every branch the song birds flew (18 0). The motif of birds
seems to complete the vision of the Otherworld not only because of their
mythological and folkloric meaning, but also through other themes they may
represent. Birds are generally seen as unfretted and free; the Otherworld, too, is
seen as a place where there is nor law, nor rule (I, 28 2). The theme of freedom
was, moreover, rather topical at the turn of the 20th century, when Ireland was
aspiring to become a nation. Birds with their wings and flying towards the sky can
also become a symbol of aspirations trying to achieve something beyond ones
current reach, transcending ones possibilities; and on a larger scale, the
aspirations of Ireland as an independent nation. 3.2. Otherworldly beings
Having
described the Otherworld and analysed its depiction in Yeatss poetry, now its
inhabitants should be looked upon in more detail. Often it is them who are the
cause of the mortals entering the Otherworld, whether voluntarily, or against
their will. They act as mediators between the worlds and as psychopomps# leaders
of mortal souls, helping them to reach out beyond the borders of their constrained
lives. 3.2.1. Classification and description of the otherworldly beings
The
expressions Tuatha D Danann, Sidhe and fairies all refer to the inhabitants of the
Otherworld; but they have quite different connotations, even though their meanings
overlap to an extent. As mentioned before, the Tuatha D Danann, The People of the
Goddess Danu, came to Ireland as the fifth invaders, which is described in Lebor
Gabla renn, The Book of Invasions. They were a magical race (Monaghan 457 )
who became skilled in the arts of druidry and magic when living in the northern
islands of the world (MacCana 58 ). Having defeated the previous inhabitants of
Ireland, Fir Bolgs, and the demon-like Fomorians, they ruled the island for nearly
3000 years, only to be subdued by the last invasion of the Milesians, or Goidelic
Celts, in the end. However, wielding many supernatural powers, they made the
Milesians agree to split Ireland the Sons of Mil took the surface of the land,
while the Tuatha D Danann retreated to misty islands, bottoms of lakes, or fairy
mounds (Monaghan 457 ); or, according to Lady Gregorys Mythology, they chose out
the most beautiful of the hills and valleys of Ireland for them to settle in; and
[] put hidden walls about them, that no man could see through, but they themselves
could see through them and pass through them (Lady Gregory 61). Seen either way,
this world of theirs became later known as the Otherworld, and the Tuatha D
Danann, who created it, became known as the Ever-Living. In folklore though, the
inhabitants of the Otherworld are rarely referred to as Tuatha D Danann it is
rather a scholarly term, found in Gaelic texts and not commonly accessible in the
19 th century. It was Lady Gregorys mythology Gods and Fighting Men which was
probably the most influential book treating the Tuatha D Danann written in her
times. Yeats himself, however, did not mention the gods often. The only one from
the Dananns to get credit in Yeatss poetry is Angus g, the aforementioned god of
beauty and poetry (Monaghan 21), sometimes seen as the god of love (Matson, Roberts
3), who plays a role in many of Yeatss poems and dramatic pieces, being the patron
of lovers and poetry.
When the Tuatha D Danann retreated into the Otherworld,
they became known as the Sidhe (sdh, fairy in Gaelic). Originally, sdh meant

hill or a mound that served as a passage to the Otherworld# (Monaghan 419 ); and
the people hiding in these mounds were referred to as Aes Sidhe, The People of the
Fairy Mounds (Monaghan 169 ). Eventually, the aes was dropped, and name of their
dwelling became to denote the fairies themselves (Bramsbck 49 ). Although sdh
means fairy in Irish, the connotations of the word are more mystical than those of
the word fairy, perhaps because there is a noble air about them they are
unearthly, beautiful and shadowy. Sometimes they are called the host of air,# as
they journey with the wind (Yeats, Notes to The Wind Among the Reeds 65); the
manner in which Yeats describes them in one of his prose stories implies a sense of
mysticism and airiness:And before them and beyond them, but at a distance as if in
reverence, there were other shapes, sinking and rising and coming and going, and
Hanrahan knew them by their whirling flight to be the Sidhe, the ancient defeated
gods. (Stories of Red Hanrahan 58 -59 ) The same ambivalence which enfolds the
Otherworld can be also noticed when speaking, or writing, about the Sidhe.
Sometimes they are depicted as a gay, exalting and gentle race (The Man who
Dreamt of Faeryland 20) with brows as white as fragrant milk (The Wanderings of
Oisin I, 204), emphasising their beauty and nobility; sometimes they are portrayed
with neither positive nor negative connotations, yet in words which evoke a
mystical sensation in the reader showing them as essentially non-human, and
beyond the mortals comprehension because of their feelings connected to unearthly
passion, which is outside of the human concepts of right and wrong the wayward
twilight companies / who sigh with mingled sorrow and content / because their
blossoming dreams have never bent / under the fruit of evil and of good (To Some
I Have Talked by Fire 6-9 ); and sometimes their portrayal is clearly dark, shadowy
and sinister, stressing the connection of the Sidhe to death,# or to baleful powers
of nature, such as desolate winds (Unappeasable Host); one of the most
tenebrous descriptions of them is expressed in the following simile, which presents
their tendency to sometimes take over a mortals soul: the dark folk who live in
souls / of passionate men, like bats in the dead trees (To Some I Have Talked by
Fire 4-5). They are not particularly interested in the world of people and rarely
intervene into the world of the mortals (MacCana 65); usually they live their own
lives, do not care for much attention, even resent being talked of (Yeats, Fairy
and Folk Tales 4). Moreover, if any one becomes too much interested in them, and
sees them over much, he loses all interest in ordinary things (Yeats, Notes to
Wind Among the Reeds 66) sometimes just glancing upon their unearthly beauty is
enough to become glamoured and drop the mortal dream (Hosting of the Sidhe 5),
renouncing hopes of happiness in the ordinary world; and being endowed with the
dreams and desires of the immortal beauty of the world of the Sidhe: And if any
gaze on our rushing band,#We come between him and the deed of his hand,#We come
between him and the hope of his heart. (Hosting of the Sidhe l0-12) Sdh is
sometimes used synonymously to fairy, but the term fairy encompasses less
mysticism, and is more general it may refer to different beings of the
Otherworld the Tuatha D Danann (or sometimes referred to as Dannan children
in Yeatss work), elves (in the English diminutive conception of little pixies#),
or even ghosts (Monaghan 167 ). Fairies in Yeatss work are more complicated and
less human pretty and kind, yet lawless angels who live in the elements of
air, water, and fire (Parkinson 26); very different from trumpety little English
fairies (MacNeice qtd. in Parkinson 25). Yeats tried to create a systematic
classification of Irish fairies, which analysed types of fairies imaginatively
rather than scientifically (Bramsbck 28 ).# Yeats distinguishes between two types
of fairies the sociable fairies and solitary fairies (Yeats, Irish Fairy Tales
402). The most common of the sociable fairies are called also trooping fairies, or
sheehogues; these are the typical Irish Good People or Wee Folk (Yeats, Irish
Tales 402; Monaghan 168 ), who live in fairy raths, steal children and sometimes act
mischievously, but are otherwise on the whole good (Irish Fairy Tales 403). The
solitary fairies are, on the other hand, nearly all gloomy and terrible in some
way (Irish Fairy Tales 403) perhaps the most famous is the Leprechaun and other
similar
spiteful creatures; the Pooka, described as a wild staring phantom, which takes

forms of various animals and is only half in the world of form (Yeats, Fairy and
Folk 100); various water spirits, which are a kind of willothewisps, and house
spirits (Yeats, Writings on Folklore 23); the Banshee, whose wailing is an omen of
death (Yeats, Fairy and Folk 113); and, finally, the Leanhaun Sidhe, one of the
most important fairy figures in Yeatss work, who is the fairy mistress and muse of
poets who become her slaves (Irish Fairy Tales 402-3).
The Fairy and Folk Tales
of Irish Peasantry, also explain the origin of the fairies from the outlook of
Christian peasants that they are fallen angels, not good, nor bad enough to be
either redeemed or damned; from the more pagan view that they are gods of the
earth, or, they are placed on one level with the Sidhe and the Tuatha D Danann,
they are the gods of pagan Ireland, who, with the arrival of Christianity, when
no longer worshiped and fed with offerings, dwindled away in the popular
imagination and now are only a few spans high (11). In Yeatss times, the faith
in fairies or the Sidhe was still widely spread among the peasantry of western
Ireland. In his introduction to Fairy and Folk Tales of Irish Peasantry, he
actually stresses the fact that people believed in fairies in Ireland, whereas in
England this faith has been long dead (3); thus using fairy lore as one of the
self-fashioning tools, seeing it as purely Irish, un-English, and, therefore, as a
distinctive feature of the Irish nation. However, Yeats was blamed that he was
merely trying to bring back a little of the old dead beautiful world of Romance
into this century of great engines and spinning jennies, when he claimed that the
Irish peasant still believes in fairies (Yeats, Writings on Folklore 7 7 ). Yeats
gathered his information from country people; he wandered about raths and faery
hills and questioned old women and old men when he was tired out or unhappy
(Autobiographies 9 6). Among these people, he mentions, in his writings, most often
Paddy Flynn and Biddy Hart, who became to be viewed symbols of the peasant wisdom.
He claims that in Ireland, no matter what one doubts, one never doubts the
fairies (The Celtic Twilight 8 ) even when all other faith has failed, people
still have the fairies to stick to. As for Yeats himself, in his Reveries of
Childhood and Youth, he explains how his emotional intuition reflected in his own
faith in fairies: I did not believe with my intellect that you could be carried
away body and soul, but I believed with my emotions and the belief of the country
people made that easy (Autobiographies 9 6).3.2.2. Themes of freedom, desire and
uneasiness When speaking about themes connected to the inhabitants of the
Otherworld, and the motifs they are expressed through, it is impossible to draw
generalizations the motifs are sometimes very complex and express more than just
one theme. Therefore, first the themes which are most closely connected to the
Sidhe# will be analysed; then the most recurring motifs in Yeatss work concerning
the Sidhe will be dealt with on their own in a separate subchapter. Generally in
folklore, as well as in Yeatss poetry, three themes are strongly connected to the
inhabitants of the Otherworld desire, freedom, and uneasiness. All of these
themes were extremely topical in the late 19 th century Ireland, which found itself
in an age of transition, changes, and uncertainty about picking the right way take
in order to achieve the desired outcome. When describing the Sidhe, Dananns and
fairies, their freedom and unfettered character is always stressed: But we in a
lonely land abide,Unchainable as the dim tide,With hearts that know nor law, nor
rule,And hands that hold no wearisome tool (The Wanderings of Oisin I, 337 -340) The
mention of the wearisome tool clearly shows that the freedom of the Sidhe was
also seen as liberation from the daily drudgery of the Irish people, for whom the
vision of the Otherworld was an escapist fantasy from their ordinary lives; its
inhabitants were happy because their hands were free of wearisome tools. In the
above quoted excerpt, boundless sea is used as the motif which expresses the theme
of freedom unchainable as the dim tide; but other accurate motifs, such as wind
and dance recur in Yeatss poems. Generally, movement is important to express
freedom when speaking about the Sidhe, dynamic verbs are often used, and the
poems seem to be, at all times, in restless fluttering motion. A good demonstration
of this can be found in the poem The Unappeasable Host, which is written in first
person from the perspective of a mortal woman, while a host of the Sidhe is passing
by. The whole poem is in motion; nothing is still, apart from the mortal woman, who

is the speaker, and her child therefore everything supernatural is on the move.
If the reader makes a list of the verbs used in the poem, almost all of them
express a somewhat violent circulation ride, flies, calling, cry,
hover, and beat, blow , shake; the Sidhe move freely at their will, and
there is nothing to tie them up. Even their appearance shows them as unrestrained
and free:Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound, Our breasts are heaving, our
eyes are agleam,Our arms are waving, our lips are apart. (The Hosting of the
Sidhe 7 -9 )These three verses not only show the unfettered character of the Sidhe,
through motifs of their unbound hair, heaving breasts, waving arms; but also a kind
of ecstasy rooted in their freedom the eyes agleam and lips apart indicate
that the Sidhe indulge in their freedom to the point of rapture. Dishevelled hair
is also a motif connected to fairies and the Sidhe which would express a degree of
freedom; in the Land of Hearts Desire, the fairy child is described to have wild
hair the winds have tumbled (19 12). In his notes to the first edition of The Wind
Among the Reeds, Yeats says about them that they are almost always said to wear no
covering upon their heads, and to let their hair stream out (Notes to Wind among
the Reeds 66), an image which emphasises the theme of freedom in Yeatss work.
The other important theme connected to the Sidhe is that of desire. Yeatss
early work is full of motifs which express desire either spiritual (the desire of
mortals for the immortal world, or for a kind of spiritual epiphany); or romantic
longing for immortal love. These are usually intermingled indiscernibly, and
achieving one often entails achieving the other as well this is the case of
Forgael, who inseparably links love and the Otherworld; or the case of the
fisherman in the poem The Man who Dreamt of Faeryland; or Oisn and Niamh,
Cchulainn and Fand, and other such mythological couples. The Sidhe seem to be
connected to vague desires and hopes (Yeats, Notes to Wind among the Reeds 8 6)
and their desire does not dwindle; it is the immortal desire of immortals
(Notes to Wind among the Reeds 9 3). In The Wanderings of Oisn, Yeats employs an
interesting motif, which expresses an unfulfilled everlasting longing Oisn and
Niamh, while crossing the sea to the Otherworld, encounter two phantoms:We
galloped; now a hornless deerPassed us by, chased by a phantom houndAll pearly
white, save one red ear;And now a lady rode like the windWith an apple of gold in
her tossing hand;And a beautiful young man followed behindWith quenchless gaze and
fluttering hair. (I, 139 -45)Yeats borrowed the motifs of the hornless deer and redeared hound, who change into the lady and the young man, from the Gaelic poem by
Michael Comyn (Alspach 8 52-53). He adopted this shape-shifting motif to such an
extent, that he used it later in another poem of his own Mongan Laments the Change
that has Come upon Him and His Beloved Do you not hear me calling, white deer
with no horns! / I have been changed to a hound with one red ear (1-2). The very
motif of a hunt is a symbol of desire; and in his notes to the Wind Among the
Reeds, Yeats claims that this hound and this deer seem plain images of the desire
of man which is for the woman, and the desire of the woman which is for the
desire of the man, and of all desires that are as these (9 2-3). The image
describes eternal unfulfilled desire; for anytime Oisn and Niamh pass the sea,
these two phantoms are chasing each other, never to achieve their goal. They are
obviously otherworldly beings white animals with red ears come from the
Otherworld, according to Celtic folklore (Hemming 7 1); and they, apart from
romantic desire, express the Celtic longing for infinite things the world has
never seen.# It reached beyond this world, and those who got overcome by this kind
of desire, found no comfort in the grave (The Man who Dreamt of Faeryland 48 ).
By giving such a great importance to the theme of desire in his early poetry, Yeats
is definitely voicing his own romantic frustrations; yet he also makes it clear
that this longing is not just his own, but it is a Celtic longing a general
feeling of a nation, long deprived of welfare, which is striving to achieve liberty
and peace. The Irish desire, whether it belonged to the mortal, or immortal world,
helped the Irish to identify themselves with the Sidhe a chosen race, who
rejoice in spite of whatever ravelled waters rise and fall (30-1); something
denied to the Irish for centuries, being the subdued race, tossed and turned by the
ravelled waters.
However, as already mentioned, the Revival was not

homogenous there was no agreed way to fashion the Irish identity (OCH 319 ),
making the last two decades of the 19 th century a turbulent period full of hopes
and desires to achieve national and personal freedom; but leaving the nation quite
uncertain about how they were
to be achieved, and which is the right path to take. The fairies were to lead the
way; however, in popular depiction, as well as in poetry, the fairies were shrouded
in ambivalence. The uncertainty of the era may be reflected in the uncertainty and
uneasiness about those who were to symbolise the transition into the new age.
People feared and awed the Sidhe, who were a mysterious race from beyond the realms
of the mortal world; moreover, the Sidhe were capable of evoking in mortals
contradictory feelings at the same time:He heard while he sang and dreamed#A piper
piping away,#And never was piping so sad,#And never was piping so gay. (Host of
Air 9 -12)The fairy piper from the host of air creates a feeling of ambivalence
in the mortal listeners; in the same way nothing was black and white in the
reality, and the contradictory feelings about many national matters were at place,
as can be seen from Yeatss bitter description of the era given in his Ireland
after Parnell. 3.2.3. Motifs connected the Sidhe
To create the above described
image of the Sidhe, and to express the aforementioned themes connected to them in
tradition, Yeats used certain motifs more than others. Of these the perhaps most
remarkable is the motif of the wind, which is connected to Ireland in general;# the
strong association of this motif and the Sidhe in Yeatss work has its roots in
folklore, according to which the Sidhe certainly have much to do with the wind.#
They journey in whirling winds and when the country people see the leaves
whirling on the road they bless themselves, because they believe the Sidhe to be
passing by (Notes to Wind among the Reeds 65-6). The belief that The Sidhe are
in the wind can be noted in The Land of Hearts Desire, when the wind carries away
the primroses which were to protect the family, and the Bruins believe that it is
the fairies who have taken them, and the child who came running in the wind(10).
Yeats uses the wind to symbolize desire, as he claims: wind and spirit and vague
desire have been associated everywhere (Notes to Wind among the Reeds 8 6). This
vague desire is something which is characteristic of Yeatss early poetry and is
strongly linked to the Irish mind and spirit, as was pointed out before. An
interesting combination of motifs is that of wind and reeds both very typical
of the Irish environment and scenery. The motif of the wind among the reeds can
evoke different feelings in the reader it can conjure an image of a nation thrown
about by circumstances, at the mercy of something powerful and unconcerned, but
still able to withstand it, as the reeds withstand the gusts of wind; or, on the
other hand, it might be taken into consideration that it is the wind that makes the
reeds speak, thus, giving a voice to an otherwise dumb plant it speaks out for a
voiceless people, perhaps through the power of the Sidhe: The faeries and the more
innocent of the spirits [. . .] lamented over our fallen world in the lamentation
of the wind-tossed reeds (The Celtic Twilight 17 4). In The Land of Hearts Desire
the final fairy song ends by repeating what they heard a reed of Coolaney say,
when swayed by the wind.# The very title of his most aesthetic collection
(Jeffares, Man and Poet 106) is The Wind Among the Reeds, a term which Yeats
associates with the poetry of Ireland. In the Celtic Twilight, he said about poems
of an Irish peasant, that they, with their wild music as of winds blowing in the
reeds, seemed to me the very inmost voice of Celtic sadness, and of Celtic longing
for infinite things the world has never seen (16). This longing is what enables
the Sidhe in the wind to act as psychopomps on various levels they are guides who
lead the mortals to the land of hearts desire; whether that may be the
Otherworld, or Ireland itself.
Another important recurring motif is that of a
host. The Sidhe were often depicted as passing in groups, forming a host the
merrier multitude or the Western host, being the expressions the fairy child
uses in The Land of Hearts Desire (28 ). The word host carries a multitude of
meanings, all of them applied in the poems and helpful to constitute the picture of
the Sidhe: it can mean an army, originating in Latin hostis, enemy; or a host
can be someone who receives or entertains guests, from Latin hospit, guest. This
near-opposite double meaning expresses the ambivalence towards the Sidhe and

fairies looking upon them with slight mistrust, but accepting them as an
inevitable part of the Irish tradition and of being Irish. For example, the title
of a poem The Hosting of the Sidhe offers a sinister image of an airy host
passing by, but also implies that the Sidhe are inviting the mortals to join them.
The word has yet another meaning: Eucharist bread, from Latin hostia sacrifice.
The host of the Sidhe are the gods of old, and the meaning of Eucharist implied
in the word host, brings the old religion to the level of Christianity; for the
Sidhe still have a refined place in the religious and metaphysical lives of the
Irish the unappeasable host / Is comelier than candles at Mother Marys feet
(The Unappeasable Host 11-12). Moreover, the etymology of the last meaning of the
word, sacrifice, indicates that getting to know the Sidhe, and the acceptance of
their world, requires a sacrifice of the joys of the human world. This can be seen
in many poems, mainly in The Stolen Child, Hosting of the Sidhe, or the in play
The Land of Hearts Desire.
To describe the past time of the Sidhe and to stress
their unbound and free character, Yeats often uses the motif of dance. When Oisn
and Niamh came to the Island of the Living, they danced with the immortals, who
danced like shadows on the mountains (I, 38 8 ); Mary longs for a dance deep in
the dewy shadow of the wood (The Land of Hearts Desire 8 ), in The host of Air,
ODriscoll and his bride Bridget joined the faery people for a dance before these
carried Bridget away. This motif became increasingly important in Yeatss later
poetry, expressing, according to Allison Bate, something in Yeats, which is forcing
him to attempt a creation of an art separate from everything heterogeneous and
casual, from all character and circumstance (Yeats qtd. in Bate 1217 ), connecting
dance and eternity (Bate 1218 );# but already in his early poems it was connected to
immortality and those who danced the wild and sudden dance of the immortals,
mocked at Time and Fate and Chance (Wanderins of Oisin I, 29 1). Dance in folklore
is depicted as being the favourite past time of fairies, who danced on and on, and
days and days went by, and all the country-side came to look at them, but still
their feet never tired. (The Celtic Twilight 131). Their dancing is described in
arather mystical and unearthly way:We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden
dancesMingling hands and mingling glances (The Stolen Child 16-18 )In The Land of
Hearts Desire, dance is used as a form of sorcery, when the fairy child dances,
swaying about like the reeds (24) and thus charms Mary perhaps carrying out
akind of initiation rite of Mary to the Otherworld. Dance also symbolises passion;
not in the restricted romantic sense of the word, but in much broader terms it
can evoke the feeling of avague unearthly passion. In Rosa Alchemica, Yeats
describes amystical dance which was an initiation rite into amagical order: and
every moment the dance was more passionate, until all the winds of the world seemed
to have awakened under our feet (Rosa Alchemica in Stories of Red Hanrahan 222).
This kind of passion also runs through the feet of the dancing Sidhe in Yeatss
depiction of the otherworldly beings.
Another motif also connected to the
unrestrained passion and sorcery of the Sidhe, though not as dominant as that of
dance, is the motif of fire. In the Otherworld, love is seen as an
imperishable fire (The Shadowy Waters 49 ), which emphasises the theme of eternal
passion of its inhabitants. In the early version of The Land of Hearts Desire, the
fairy child, after dancing and forming around Mary a barrier of primroses, kisses
the flowers and makes them to turn into little twisted flames (35). The Sidhe are
sometimes depicted in a fiery way as a part of the embattled flaming multitude
(To Some I have Talked by Fire 10), which represents the transcendental unearthly
powers in Ireland. In the Hosting of the Sidhe, Caoilte (who was originally a
mortal hero, but probably achieved immortality by joining the Sidhe#) is tossing
his burning hair Yeats explains this image in the notes to The Wind Among the
Reeds, by retelling a legend of Caoiltes appearance to a king of Ireland years
after his alleged death, while being a flaming man, that he might lead him in the
darkness (69 )#. The motif of fire was important also because of the relation to
the character of Irish people as it was seen back in the 19 th century as the
most inflammable people on Gods earth (Taylor qtd. in Yeats, Autobiographies
28 3). Depicting the Irish as fiery and inflammable, while attributing these very
qualities to the Sidhe, might have worked as a means of self-fashioning; Yeats was

creating national identity by remaking Irish people into mystic Celts (Cairns,
Richards 67 ).
The last motif related to the Sidhe, particularly important for
Yeats as an artist, is that of a voice. The voices of the Sidhe are the
inspiration for the artist; the everlasting voices, who talk to the mortals in
birds, in wind on the hill, / in shaken boughs, in tide on the shore#
(Everlasting Voices 6-7 ). In The Land of Hearts Desire, the voices of unseen
beings speak the last words in the play, and continuously repeat what can be seen
as Marys verdict, the lonely of heart is withered away (17 , 33). But
The Land of Hearts Desire is not the only work in which Yeats stresses the
importance of voices at the moment of someones death; in the short story The
Death of Red Hanrahan, the poet Hanrahan is embraced by a woman of the Sidhe, who
claims to be one of the one of the lasting people, of the lasting unwearied
Voices (Stories of Red Hanrahan 7 6). The significance of the motif of avoice is
brought about by the fact that the poet, inspired by the voices of the Sidhe, is
avoice himself, inspiring the nation. 3.3. Transcendence The two previous
chapters have dealt with the Otherworld and its inhabitants, who act as
psychopomps, leading the mortals towards transcendence; here, the act of
transcendence itself, aided by the otherworldly beings, will be looked upon. In
Yeatss writings there are various instances in which the fairies, or the Sidhe,
act as psychopomps to human souls and accompany them to a next stage of their
being. There are various types of psychopomps and transcendence to be noticed in
folklore, as well as in Yeatss work, and a few categories can be drawn; yet it is
impossible to clearly discern between them, as they often overlap.#
3.3.1. Death
As already mentioned, the Sidhe were often connected
to death. In Yeatss time a legend existed in Western Ireland, that a battle over
the dying was fought between the friends and enemies of the dying among the
Sidhe (Notes to Wind Among the Reeds 100).# The fairy most closely linked to
death in Irish folklore is probably the banshee (bean sidhe Gaelic for woman
fairy). Banshees are categorised as solitary fairies; though Yeats claims that,
perhaps, a banshee is a sociable fairy grown solitary through much sorrow (Irish
Fairy Tales 405). Appearing sometimes as hags and sometimes as beautiful women
(Monaghan 34), they often foretell a persons death by wailing in grief or clapping
their hands (Yeats, Fairy and Folk Tales 113). The more respectable and brave the
dying person was, the more keening voices of banshees lamented over him;
therefore, the cry of a banshee often stressed the factor of dead persons
greatness in praise poetry, as can be seen from the poem by Clarence Mangan,
published in Yeatss compilation of Irish fairy tales:There was lifted up one voice
of woe,One lament of more than mortal grief,Through the wide South, to and fro,For
a fallen Chief. (A Lamentation ll. 1-4, in Fairy and Folk Tales 117 )However, the
banshee is a folkloric rather than literary character and did not occur in Irish
literature before the 17 th century (Monaghan 34). In Yeatss work she appears in
different forms as various fairies who bear certain characteristics of a banshee.
In The Land of Hearts Desire, the fairies singing outdoors bear certain
accepts of a banshee, as their song about how the lonely of heart is withered
away foreshadows Marys death. After she dies, the song of the fairies is taken
up by many voices, who sing loudly, as if in triumph (33). The fairies singing
accompanies her through her death and presumably leads her to the Otherworld. Such
a companion in death is also the character Winny Byrne from the short story The
Death of Hanrahan (The Stories of Red Hanrahan). Winny is an old beggar, whose
wits were stolen by the Others, the great Sidhe (67 -8 ), and she tends the poet
Owen Red Hanrahan during his last illness in her hut. In the moment of his death
she embraces him: And then there came out of the mud-stiffened rags arms as white
and as shadowy as the foam on a river, and they were put about his body. (7 5)As he
is dying, he marries one of the lasting people, who dwells in Winnys body, and he
can see lights which sometimes seem like a wisp lighted for a marriage, and
sometimes like a tall white candle for the dead (7 6). The image of the flames,
which are lighted at a marriage as well as at a funeral, strengthens the connection
between the end of life in the mortal world and the new beginning in the
Otherworld, where Owen Hanrahans soul has probably departed, after having joined

Winny.
This short story is probably the best prose account of the gradual
transmission into the Otherworld through death which can be found in Yeatss work.
At first, it seemed to Red Hanrahan that he was beginning to belong to some world
out of sight and misty (65); he moved on the edge of the worlds, somewhere between
dream and reality because sometimes he would hear coming and going in the wood
music that when it stopped went from his memory like adream (65). Then once in
the stillness of midday he heard a sound like the clashing of many swords (65),
which is the above mentioned battle between the friends and enemies of aman who
is near his death (7 0). At night he heard the faint sound of keening (65),
which would be the banshee, and the sound of frightened laughter broken by the
wind (65-6); and to show, that it is the Sidhe who lead the way and act
aspsychopomps, Hanrahan saw many pale beckoning hands (66). Later, in Winnys
house, he heard voices, very faint and joyful (7 2-3) and he knew that the room
was filled by some [beings] greater than himself (7 2) who had all power in their
hands (7 2). The short story follows, step by step, a death of aperson, looked
upon from afolkloric and at the same time mystical point of view.
In Yeatss
poetry, The Unappeasable Host is definitely noteworthy, as for dealing with the
theme of transcendence through death. In this vague poem, the fairy and the human
worlds overlap in the approach of death, while a host of the Sidhe passes by. Being
written from the subjective perspective of a woman narrator, the reader does not
learn whether all this is really happening or whether it is just a vision and some
kind of a mystical experience of the dying woman:The Danaan children laugh, in
cradles of wrought gold, And clap their hands together, and half close their eyes,
For they will ride the North when the ger-eagle flies, With heavy whitening wings,
and a heart fallen cold: I kiss my wailing child and press it to my breast, And
hear the narrow graves calling my child and me. (1-6) The theme of death is present
through various motifs such as the narrow graves, heart fallen cold; and, in
connection to the Sidhe, the motif of clapping hands is important as already
mentioned, according to Yeatss explanatory chapters in The Fairy and Folk Tales of
Irish Peasantry, banshees clap their hands to foretell a persons death. The whole
poem is written in a mystic tone, belonging to the supernatural world. Only the
verse I kiss my wailing child and press it to my breast (5) seems to be rooted in
the real world; everything else is somewhat veiled and vague. The poem is also
based on iteration of contrasting concepts, which creates certain bipolarity. The
double vision of the world as the human and the supernatural is expressed by pairs
of contrasting words and images, which represent also the contrast between life and
death: such as laugh wail, cradles narrow graves, clap their hands
together press my child to my breast#. The contrast is also reinforced by the
repetition of the word child in the expressions my wailing child and the
Danaan children the Tuatha D Danann. Therefore the same word child refers
to the vulnerable wailing being, and to the Sidhe, who, perhaps, have the life of
the wailing child in their hands. The host of the Sidhe, in this poem, with all
their beauty and charm, are the guides of souls; and in the moment of death,
Christian belief is displaced by old Celtic myth, because The unappeasable host /
is comelier than candles at Mother Marys feet (11-12).3.3.2. Kidnappers
Another type of psychopomps among the fairies, or the Sidhe, are the
kidnappers. They usually carry away a child, or a newly-wed bride, whom they fancy
in Yeatss poetry and drama, the subject is dealt with in The Stolen Child,
The Host of Air and the Land of Hearsts Desire. In an essay Kidnappers,
published in Celtic Twilight, Yeats displays folk stories he gathered, which talk
about people who were carried away. The poem The Host of Air is based on one of
these stories a young man, ODriscoll, joins a merry company among whom is his
bride, with a sad and a gay face. While he is engaged in playing cards with them,
the company is suddenly gone like a drifting smoke and carrying off his bride. In
the story published in Celtic Twilight, the young man rushes home, only to find his
bride dead; and in original version of the poem, the last stanza was more explicit:
He knew now the folk of the air,And his heart was blackened by dread,And he ran to
the door of his house;Old women were keening the dead. (Yeats qtd. in Jeffares,
Commentary)It may be just the soul which is stolen, after death when it has left

the body, it is drawn away, sometimes, by the fairies and such souls are
considered lost (Yeats, Fairy and Folk Tales 131). Or sometimes, when the fairies
carry off a mortal, they leave some sickly fairy child instead, or a log of
wood, so bewitched that it looks like a mortal pining away, and dying, and being
buried (Fairy and Folk Tales 55). They take away the body and soul and the dead
body was but an appearance made by the enchantment of the others, according to
country faith (Yeats, Broken Gates of Death in Folk Writings 17 6). This country
faith is demonstrated in The Land of Hearts Desire, where Bridget warns Marys
husband to keep away from her body, because the fairy child has not only taken
Marys soul, but her body as well, leaving nothing, but a dead image behind
(Bramsbck 8 9 ):Come from that image: body and soul are gone.You have thrown your
arms about a drift of leavesOr bole of an ash-tree changed into her image. (32)
But the kidnappers need not be connected with death
they can steal a child or a new-wedded bride and keep these mortals to live
among them in the bloodless land of Faery where, according to folk beliefs,
mortals are happy enough, but doomed to melt out at the last judgment like bright
vapour (The Celtic Twilight 118 ). Or, perhaps, the soul can be carried off,
leaving the body untouched, yet without wits there are places where one should
not sleep, for there is a possibility that if they do, they may wake silly; such
as the aforementioned Rosses point (Yeats qtd. in Jeffares 19 68 , 13), or fairy
raths. In the Death of Red Hanrahan, the Sidhe stole Winny Byrnes wits one
Samhain night many years ago, when she had fallen asleep on the edge of arath
(The Stories of Red Hanrahan 68 ); and one of the Ever-living found dwelling in her
body. Perhaps the contact with the Sidhe, and the transcendental value of their
madness, is what gave the fools of the Celtic stories wisdom that was above all
the wisdom of the wise (Notes to Wind Among the Reeds). The most famous
kidnappers in Yeats poetry are the fairies in The Stolen Child. Their voice
resonates throughout the poem, but it is most distinctly heard in the refrain:Come
away, O human child,To the waters and the wild,With a faery hand in handFor the
worlds more full of weeping than you can understand. (9 -12) The verses sound
rather theatrical and convey a really strong appeal. One wonders, whether the child
even has a chance to say No. A very strong contrast between the human child and
the fairies is present. The rhyme child-wild is somewhat expected,#which makes
the refrain easy to remember; and, together with the regular rhythm, it sounds
almost like an incantation. However, the tone changes in the fourth stanza and the
last refrain. It is still spoken by the fairy, but the addressee shifted from the
child to someone third there is no more the necessity to lure him, since the
fairies have triumphed and are leading him away: Away with us hes going, / the
solemn eyed (lines 42-3). Also, the minor chances in the last refrain make a great
difference, as for the effect it has: For he comes, the human child,To the waters
and the wildWith a faery, hand in hand,From a world more full of weeping than he
can understand. (lines 50-53)The final refrain is less dramatic and theatrical. It
is no longer an appeal and there is no argumentation, which is expressed by the
change of for the worlds more full of weeping to from a world more full of
weeping than he can understand. The child is stolen, nothing can be done about it,
and the world will stay the same as it was, for those who remain still full of
weeping. Moreover, the very last verse seems to imply that also the childs
departure will cause the weeping mentioned in the poem, but he will be no longer
touched by it; for he has gone beyond the scope of the human world. 3.3.3. Art and
love Another important instant of fairies or Sidhe acting as psychopomps in
mythology, particularly important for Yeats, are the stories of people who achieve
transcendence through art or love. It can be transcendence to a physical
Otherworld, such as that of Oisn, but it can be just an insight to the world of
art, or being changed through love. Depicting psychopomps like this means seeing
them more on the metaphorical level many a time they lead the souls to a
different stage of knowledge and being. Art and love are connected in the figure of
the Leanhaun Sidhe (Gaelic for fairy mistress) a fairy who seeks love of men
and becomes their muse, giving inspiration to the poets who, however, pine away
under her influence. According to Yeats, most of the Gaelic poets, down to quite

recent times, have had a Leanhaun Shee; they die young and are carried to the
Otherworld, for death does not destroy her power# (Fairy tales 404-5). The theme
of apoet under the power of aLeanhaun Shee is treated by Yeats in many of his
narrative works; his poet-heroes, for example, Michael Hearne from the Speckled
Bird, but most notably, Owen Red Hanrahan, must experience some kind of epiphany or
transcendence to become real poets. A Yeatsian poet-hero is described as solitary,
contemplative, an outcast in search of ineffable experience, a doomed wanderer and
exile in search of eternal beauty (Hirsch 59 ) and this eternal beauty comes to him
as afairy mistress, who is for Yeats both the muse of the Gaelic poet and an
emblem of the deep cost to the romantic artist (Hirsch 61). However, the Leanhaun
Shee is simultaneously life-giving [] and life-denying (Hirsch 61), and she
leads them to their moment of epiphany and transcendence at the cost of renouncing
the human world. In the poem The Hosting of the Sidhe, a whole host of unearthly
beautiful beings are the inspiration of the poet and therefore act as psychopomps,
guiding his soul into and through the world of poetry. However, they have asimilar
effect as the Leanhaun Shee has on those who gaze on their rushing band (10)
they come between him and the deed of his hand and him and the hope of his
heart; thus bereaving him of the mortal hopes of happiness in this world, but
replacing them with a sense of beauty: The host is rushing 'twixt night and
day,#And where is there hope or deed as fair? (13-14)In this evaluative conclusion
carried out by the speaker of the poem, he seems to imply that they are so
beautiful, that it might be worth sacrificing human happiness (satisfaction with
the human life and world) for the ideal of beauty towards which they could lead his
soul. The host of the Sidhe has given the speaker his poetic abilities, but there
is a price to be paid: the Sidhe interfere with his human life, and to attain this
immortal beauty in asingle timeless moment the Yeatsian hero must leave the timebound human world for the supernatural otherworld (Hirsch 62). The Leanhuan Shee
is often connected to death, as Winny Byrne is, in the last story from the Stories
of Red Hanrahan as the poet is dying, she enters into a kind of mystical marriage
with him, and, being one of the lasting unwearied Voices (7 6), she is also his
muse, who was with him throughout his life, but whom he was still seeking; when she
reveals herself, she whispers to him: You will go looking for me no more upon the
breasts of women (7 5). In this case, the poet hero must die a physical death in
order to attain the irreducible and indefinable mystified essence (Hirsch 63).
However, this need not be always the case; the transcendence through art and love
may be only metaphorical, as mentioned before. It is concerned mainly by the
hero's spiritual growth and development and his developing faith in a higher,
invisible level of being (Hirsch 52).# Yeatss concern with the theme of
transcendence though art and love, enabled through a relationship with afairy
muse, definitely has much to do with his own romantic obsession with Maud Gonne. In
his eyes, she was the incarnation of the immortal beauty of the Sidhe;# he stressed
her godlike character in his autobiographical writings as well as in his poetry:
With a beauty like a tightened bow, a kindThat is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern? (No Second Troy 8 -10)He gives her
attributes which could easily be used to describe one of the Tuatha D Danann. She,
by being what she is (No Second Troy 11), became his psychopomp, carrying his
soul helplessly away, and becoming an inspiration of much of his poetry; in The
Wind Among the Reeds she is the most frequent object and addressee of his love
poems, which are full of unyielding devotion. This, together with the Celtic
imagery and choice of the motifs, creates a transcendental impression:And therefore
my heart will bow, when dew Is dropping sleep, until God burn time, Before the
unlabouring stars and you. (He Tells of the Perfect Beauty 6-8 )Maud was well
aware of being Yeatss muse. In her autobiography, she recorded a dialogue with
Yeats, where she says: The world should thank me for not marrying you because
you make beautiful poetry out of what you call your unhappiness (Jeffares, Man and
Poet 113). Just as the Gaelic muse Leanhaun Shee, Maud is an emblem of the poet's
necessary fatal attraction to the predatory muse (Hirsch 61), who enables him,
through love, to move to a different, and higher, stage of being. 3.3.4. Metaphor
of transcendence of the nation
All these mentioned forms of transcendence

symbolize the transfiguration of an individual and their reaching out for new
possibilities. But Yeats is also concerned about transcendence on a broader level
in his world the quotidian social world changing into a higher invisible or
supernatural realm (Hirsch 56), which symbolizes the transcendence of the whole
nation.# At the end of the 19 th century, Ireland, tackling with a political crisis,
badly needed a guide who would lead it towards independence or Home Rule.
Literature was to become the mediator between the reality and the desired outcome.
This idea was already discussed in the chapter on the role of art in Ireland art
itself has an otherworldly character, as it transcends time and links the past,
presence and future. Therefore, not only the Sidhe, depicted in literature and
mythology were psychopomps, who symbolically lead Ireland to transcendence and
national consciousness, but Yeasts poems as such could be considered the guides of
souls, leading the readers to a kind of, whether individual or national,
transcendence.
However, Yeats, being a mystic, went even further and practised a
kind of sorcery through his poems. The poem The Secret Rose is an invocation of
something great which is to come. He ends the poem with words:Surely thine hour has
come, thy great wind blows,Far-off, most secret, and inviolate Rose? (31-2)One must
keep in mind that the Rose, among other things, symbolises also Ireland. Here, it
is some great revelation, either for the world, for Ireland, or for Yeats himself.
What is interesting, is what led to these final culminating words the greater
part of the poem, Yeats is remembering episodes from Irish mythic past, which are
enfolded in the great leaves of the Memory of the World. Therefore, on a level of
mysticism and sorcery, the combination of mythology and poetry can bring some great
revelation it is though the ancient stories mentioned in the poem, that Yeats
invokes the Secret Rose. He himself is the psychopomp, the leader of souls, the
magician who though his art encourages the rose to bloom once again:Come near; I
would, before my time to go,Sing of old Eire and the ancient ways:Red Rose, prod
Rose, sad Rose of all my days. (To Rose upon the Rood of Time 22-4)4. Conclusion
The main purpose of the thesis was to demonstrate how national identity can be
constructed through literature, and, particularly, how the use of certain motifs
and themes in Yeatss poetry supports the process of Irish self-fashioning. As the
Irish identity, to a large extent, depended on the peoples adherence to their
racial Celtic substrate, and on differentiating themselves from the English, the
Revival literature, which strove to support the self-fashioning process, turned to
ancient myths and Celtic elements. Further, the thesis argued that the theme of
transcendence in poetry symbolized the metaphorical transcendence of the Irish, who
were reaching towards liberation. The motifs Yeats chose to employ in the analysed
works were closely connected to the Irish folk imagination of the 19 th century;
apart from the theme of mystic transcendence, the choice of the motifs points to
themes topical in Yeatss times and related to the strives of the 19 th century
Ireland: desire, freedom, aspirations, insecurity, and vision of happiness. The
motif of the Otherworld conveyed solace for the country people, who saw in it the
vision of happiness. Moreover, the personal journey of a hero who reaches the
Island of the Blest can bear parallels to the journey of the Revivalists to reach
the imaginary Ireland (P&T), which would be independent. This symbolic value of
the Otherworld is supported by the use of images which are typically Irish apart
from the fact, that as a physical place it is usually an island, the use of mist,
weater, dew, drops, birds is extensive, all of these being motifs connected to
Ireland. The implicit identification of the Otherworld and Ireland is yet
strengthened by the fact that the Otherworld actually is in Ireland; it is the
other, unseen, mystical part of the country, which gives Ireland as such a whim
of glamour and nobleness. The other dominant motif in Yeatss Celtic poetry is
represented by the Sidhe. They are the inhabitants of the Otherworld, and, being
able to pass in and out of their invisible realm, they have also become the
mediators between the two worlds. Therefore, it is they who enable the
aforementioned transcendence. As is the case with the Otherworld, the Sidhe, too,
are connected to sub-motifs such as wind, dance, and fire, which express themes of
desire and freedom. Their very appearance, with their loose hair, unearthly beauty,
unfettered character and unpredictable behaviour, reflects the very themes

important in the revivalist literature. The Sidhe act as psychopomps, leading the
mortals into the Otherworld; whether through death, kidnapping, love, or art. The
figure of a psychopomp became increasingly important in the late 19 th century,
because, as mentioned, the transcendence to the Otherworld could be seen as a
metaphor: in the real world it corresponded to the transcendence of a subdued
nation into the Irish nation; a process in which art, in this case particularly
poetry, played the role of the psychopomp. Or, perhaps, poems could be seen as the
aforementioned liminal places the points of exchange (Monaghan 28 9 ) between the
two worlds and the gateways into the Otherworld. Then it would be the poet himself,
who would be the psychopomp, guiding his readers souls towards finding their own
national identity; which certainly was one of Yeatss ambitions. Works cited
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Finneran. New York: Scribner Poetry, 19 9 7 . Print.RsumThe thesis offers an insight
into the early poetry, drama and prose of William Butler Yeats, focusing on the
Celtic elements. These, in the late 19 th century, were meant to aid the process of

so-called self-fashioning in Ireland, as in this present thesis, the term is used

to denote the formation a national identity, or sense of the national self. The
work is divided into two major parts: the theoretical, where the historical and
cultural background is briefly outlined; and the analytical, which deals with
certain motifs in Yeatss work.
The first, theoretical part, deals first with
the historical development of the era and the events that lead to the formation of
the Irish Literary Revival. Then the work moves on to the exploration of the
process of self-fashioning. Mythology and folklore have proved to be an essential
base for this process and the Irish Literary Revival leaned on myths exceedingly.
The second part analyses Yeatss poems and searches in them for Celtic elements.
The theme which is analysed in greatest detail is the theme of transcendence in
mythology, and therefore, the motifs like the Otherworld and the Sidhe (fairies)
are paid most attention to in the thesis. Some poems, or parts of poems, are
subdued to close-reading, which has shown how tightly the theme of transcendence is
tied to the strivings of the Irish for personal, as well as national freedom.Resum
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#p#a#r#e#n#t#h#etical reference, only the line numbers. # In the Collected Poems,
The Wanderings of Oisn is set separate in the end of the book and the first
collection roughly corresponds to the now known The Crossways (The 18 8 9 Poems were
republished and renamed in 18 9 5 with some minor changes and exclusions of various
poems Yeats no longer found suitable for his purposes).# However, by the 18 9 0s they
drifted apart, and Yeats considered her poetry uninteresting. The positive
opinion he had had of her in the 18 8 0s had changed.# It is closely associated with
the Sidhe (Yeats, Notes to Wind among the Reeds 7 9 ), supernatural mythological
beings who will be dealt with in the subsequent chapters of the present thesis.#

This, however, sometimes led to the reinforcement of the stereotypes which the
Revivalists sought to dismantle, but according to Declan Kiberd, this was an
inevitable, nationalist phase through which they and their country had to pass en
route to liberation (32).# Arnold, however, did not consider the Celts as capable
of achieving freedom, or even autonomy. Nor was it desirable from his point of view
(Cairns, Richards 47 -8 ). The role of Celticism was, in English eyes, to sustain the
subordinate position of Ireland it was Englands Victorian middle-class wife.# At
best, English rulers appropriated Welsh origin stories, e.g. in the form of
Arthurian mythology (Stroh 27 ).# Both his paternal and maternal ancestors came to
Ireland from England in the 18 th and 19 th centuries and belonged to the middle
class protestant Ascendancy (Jeffares Man and Poet).# It can be seen also in the
diction of certain poems, which sometimes attempt to approach the style of the
Celtic masters of old; a good example of this adoption of poetic diction can be
found in Fergusons poems, who was nearer [than young Yeats] to the epic tradition
of the Gaelic poetry (Jeffares 38 ). # Yeats together with had an ambition to
create an Irish magical order, The Castle of Heroes. A few other Golden Dawn
members, particularly Yeatss uncle George Polexfen, and MacGregor Mathers were
involved; the rituals of the Castle of Heroes were parallel to those of the Order
of the Golden Dawn, but based on Celtic mythology and neopaganism (Greer 8 9 ).# This
thought corresponds to the passage on the epic integrity dealt with earlier in the
previous chapter the legends and folklore, being handed on from generation to
generation, form a continuous thread linking the 19 th century Ireland to the past;
and, therefore, apart from creating the nations ancestral line, they retrieve the
mentioned epic ballad age (Yeats, Nationality and Literature 9 8 ), with its
unconscious adherence to this ancestral line.
# In the early 20th century
Cuchulain became a role-model and in many ways was a symbol of the Easter Rising in
19 16; a continuous line was drawn from the ancient hero through Christ to the
revolutionaries of the 18 th
century (Kiberd 19 6, 212). Cuchulain was the personal hero of P.H. Pearse in s
words, during the Easter Week there was an imagination in Pearses soul and that
of a hero who stood against the host (Kiberd 19 6) and in a poem of Yeatss,
Pearse summoned Cuchulain to his side when fighting at the Post Office in Dublin
(Statues 25).# There is an interesting iteration of this motif in Yeatss later
poetry. The motif of a flowing changing river is used in his poem on the Easter
19 16, where it symbolizes the living stream of life and constant change not
only the water is moving, but even a shadow of cloud on the stream / changes
minute by minute (49 -50); change and the flow of life was a very important theme
in Yeatss later poetry. # In 19 16 Yeats wrote about this fabricated peasant that
he is a man who does not exist / a man who is but a dream (Fisherman 35-36). #
Later know as To Ireland in the Coming times.# A poem which is similarly looking
towards his future readers is included in the Wind among the Reeds and it is titled
The Fish; the fish symbolizing Yeatss thoughts or words. Although now, at the
moment of writing, they are not yet seen and appreciated, The people of coming
days will know / about the casting of my net (3-4). Fish are a peculiar motif in
Yeatss work (seen as symbols of thoughts, words, or perhaps poems) and in Celtic
mythology in general they symbolize wisdom (Monaghan 19 6) and they can be seen as
messengers to the Otherworld: in a poem by Yeats A Man who Dreamt of Faeryland it
were fish who sang what gold morning and evening sheds (8 ) are in the Otherworld
and aroused in the fisherman the desire to transcend the possibilities of the world
he lives in. This symbolism, mythological on one hand, Yeatss own on the other,
emphasizes the transcendental value of art fish being works of art, which open
new horizons for the reader. # This symbol was not restricted to Yeatss poetry; it
played a role in his prose as well two of his prose collections, The Secret Rose
and Rosa Alchemica, bear the symbol in the title and, in a number of stories, the
symbol appears. Interestingly, the very expression red rose bordered hem is
mentioned in one of his short stories, The Crucifixion of the Outcast and
connected to Irish art; a gleeman, who is a modern version of a Gaelic bard, talks
about his life as an artist: And I have been the more alone upon the roads and by
the sea because I heard in my heart the rustling of the rose-bordered dress of her

who is more subtle than Aengus, the Subtle-hearted, and more full of the beauty of
laughter than Conan the Bald, and more full of the wisdom of tears than Whitebreasted Deirdre, and more lovely than a bursting dawn to them that are lost in the
darkness [italics added] (The Crucifixion of the Outcast in Stories of Red
Hanrahan 9 6-7 ). Here the rustling of the rose bordered dress seems to be an
inspiration for the gleeman, and the lady wearing the dress seems to be his Gaelic
muse, more divine than all the gods and ancient heroes.# Which, however, a few
years later, at the beginning of the 20th century, Yeats bitterly claims not to
have achieved: Ireland's great moment had passed, and she had filled no roomy
vessels with strong sweet wine, where we have filled our porcelain jars against the
coming winter. (Yeats, Poetry and Ireland 18 )
# A visit of such a house by Finn
and his companions is depicted in the chapter Hospitality of Cuannas House (Lady
Gregory 18 1-18 3).# Interestingly enough, Celts did not find any inconsistency in
joining the land of the dead in the Elysian sense of an Underworld and the Land of
the Living as two aspects of the same Otherworld (MacCana 129 ).# Danaan shore
means the Otherworld here; as the home of the mentioned Thuata D Danann, the
godlike nation who allegedly lived in Ireland before the Celts. They will be dealt
with in more detail in the next chapter of the present thesis.# In folklore, this
motif is represented by a fairy mistress who steals away the most handsome man and
most brilliant poet; or, less often, a maiden is carried away to the Fairy world by
a fairy king (Monagham 17 5-5) or by the handsomest young man (Host of Air 26)
from the fairy folk, as happens in the poem Host of Air, based on a folk ballad
Yeats heard from an old woman in Sligo (Jeffares, Commentary 55). In mythology, the
most famous couples finding love in the Otherworld are Oisn and Niamh, who get
married in the Otherworld and live there happily for three hundred years; and the
beautiful fairy Fand and Cchulainn, who follows her into the Otherworld, leaving
his mortal wife at home. About the story of the latter couple Yeats claimed to be
one of the most beautiful of our old tales, which shows how deeply influenced he
was by these mythological love stories, mingling them with his personal life in his
poems.# Sometimes she is seen as abeautiful fairy queen ruling over Hy Brasil,
sometimes as the daughter of the sea god Mannamn mac Lir (Monaghan 252, 358 ); but
in Yeatss version she is the daughter of the love god Angus, which sheds even more
light on the importance of the role of love in Yeatss poetry concerning the
Otherworld.# However, in connection with the national interpretation, Aedh can be
seen as ed Eangach, who was to be, according to aprophecy, along expected king
and deliverer of Ireland (CE 4).# In the notes to the original edition of The Wind
Among the Reeds, Yeats explains that Aedh, being the Irish for fire, is fire
burning by itself . . . and he is the myrrh and frankincense that the imagination
offers continually before all that it loves (The Wind Among the Reeds 7 3-7 4).#
While in folk tales, the sleeping heroes are often giants, in mythology they are
interpreted as sleeping members of the Fianna, who one day will rise up as strong
and as well as they ever were (Lady Gregory 29 2).The fusion of the Fenians and the
giants in this meme is caused by the tendency of pagan heroes from mythological
cycles to grow bigger and bigger, until they turned into the giants in folklore
(Peasants 257 ).# They are lulled to sleep by the swaying of a branch with bells,
which is an otherworldly motif from a different story in Irish mythology King
Comrac was given such a bell-branch by the god Mannanan and used it to lull people
to sleep or soothe their sorrow - no one on earth would keep in mind any want, or
trouble, or tiredness, when that branch was shaken for him (Gregory 8 7 ). Yeats
obviously found this motif very appealing, as he used a similar one in his other
Otherworld story The Shadowy Waters the hero Forgael possesses a magical harp
which enables him to manipulate his companions, making them feel as he wants them
to. Motifs like this emphasise the power and the importance of the bard.#
Interestingly, the sleeping lovers went dumb as a stone [italics added]. Later,
the stone became one of Yeatss favourite recurring symbols, which he used to
express the futility of abstraction and abstract hatred, which took possession of
Irish nationalism in the 20th century. In 19 09 in his essay on J. M. Synge he
compared the new middle-class nationalists to a woman whose mind has turned to
stone (The Cutting of an Agate 150), but even more famously, in 19 16 he claimed in

connection to the Easter Rising: Too long a sacrifice / Can make a stone of the
heart (53-4). # In The Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry, there are
stories mentioning an underwater land, such as The Soul Cages or The Legend of
ODonoghue; in Lady Gregorys Gods and Fighting men, for example, Diarmuit, the
handsomest man of the Fianna, pursues the daughter of King Under-Wave into an
underwater land (218 -223).# This statement actually referred to an actual person
Yeatss friend, J.M. Synge; the whole quote goes as follows: He was a drifting
silent man full of hidden passion, and loved wild islands, because there, set out
in the light of day, he saw what lay hidden in himself (Yeats, The Cutting of an
Agate 17 6). However, the thought of an island being aplace of inner transcendence
can be applied more generally, especially when taking into consideration how
islands are portrayed in Yeatss poetry and in mythology as such.# The particular
story Yeats had in mind when writing this statement was some new Prometheus
Unbound, writing of which was his ambition at that time. He meant to tie it to the
Irish countryside and mythology, from which all the nations had their first
unity; it would have Patrick or Columbkil, Oisn or Fion, in Promethous place;
and, instead of Caucasus, Cro-Patric or Ben Bulben (Autobiographies 240).# Some of
these will be dealt with later in the chapter.# The Voyage of Bran actually served
as an inspiration for Yeatss The Shadowy Waters (Bramsback 33). # Goats were
considered fairylike animals; an example in the folklore is the Irish fairy
pooka, having its origin in the gaelic poc for goat (Monagham 218 ). The goatcreature in The Shadowy waters could have been a messenger from the Otherworld,
sent to Forgael by the Everliving. # The motif of sailing across the water to
achieve some transcendental goal recurred in Yeatss poetry even much later in
his life. Whereas young Yeats was crossing seas to reach the Otherworld in his
poems, older Yeats was Sailing to Byzantium [italics added] to get rid of the
tatter in its mortal dress and be gathered into the artifice of eternity.# The
version mostly analysed in the present thesis is the 19 05 published version of the
play, for being the original one, pertaining to the era which is dealt with here.
However, Yeats later revised the play and, occasionally, the revised version from
19 12 is quoted. # Beltaine, held on the first day of May, is one of the greatest
Celtic festivals, which, traditionally,
marked the beginning of summer, and used to be connected to fertility festivities
(Monaghan 40-42). However, Christianity attributed to Beltaine a somewhat sinister
character among the country people, as can be seen from the words of Bridget Bruin,
the mother of the family, talking to the priest: For there is not another night in
the year / So wicked as to-night (Land of Hearts Desire 19 12). The concerns of
country people were based on superstitions that the veil between the realms of the
living and the dead is thought to be at its thinnest and it was actually possible
to pass to the Otherworld (Matson, Roberts 9 ).# Seeing the inhabitants of the
Otherworld as incarnations of boundless passions can be supported by Yeatss
explanation of the fairies immortality in his essay The Untiring Ones from The
Celtic Twilight where he draws the contrast between human and fairy emotions. He
actually ascribed their immortality to the possibility of having boundless
emotions: we, mortal people, cannot have any unmixed emotions and it is this
entanglement of moods which makes us old, and puckers our brows and deepens the
furrows about our eyes. If we could love and hate with as good heart as the
faeries do, we might grow to be long-lived like them. Their lives consist of
untiring joys and sorrows and love with them never grows weary, nor can the
circles of the stars tire out their dancing feet (Celtic Twilight 130).# The
primroses were supposed to bring good luck to the household, if a golden path was
made in front of the door (9 ). However, the wind cried and carried them away; /
and a child came running in the wind and caught them in her hands and fondled them
(10). Later the faery child spreads primroses at Marys feet when laying charms on
her. Yeats probably picked up this idea when collecting folklore in the West of
Ireland (Bramsback 63), but later he discarded the primrose symbol, and exchanged
it for the much more common quicken bough, a tree closely associated with fairy
lore and the Otherworld either used for detecting witches, or for making magic
rods to cast spells with (Monaghan 400).# In Ireland, fairies were never called by

their real name, as it was considered dangerous, and naming them brought ill luck;
they were usually referred to as good people, but often rather not mentioned at
all, as the country people believed that the fairies are very secretive and much
resent being talked of (Yeats, Fairy and Folk Tales 4). In The Land of Hearts
Desire, Bridget Bruin blames Mary for not obeying the tradition: You know well /
How calling the good people by that name / Or talking of them over much at all /
May bring all kinds of evil on the house (14).# In the 19 12 version of The Land of
Hearts Desire, the initial stage directions for Mary read: MARY BRUIN stands by
the door reading a book. If she looks up she can see through the door into the
woods. Her position by the open door foreshadows the plot she is obviously
depicted as on the periphery of the worlds; she, as the only one of the family, has
a view on the mysterious woods, and therefore the only one who can perceive the
Otherworld. # Rosses, mentioned in The Stolen Child, is a sandy plain, covered
with short grass, being a mournful, haunted place. When a person fell asleep
there, their soul would be carried away and they would wake up silly, according
to the folk beliefs observed by Yeats (Yeats qtd. in Jeffares, Commentary 13).
Another famous otherworldly site in Yeatss poetry was Knocknarea, the grave of
Queen Meave of the Sidhe (Yeats, Notes to The Wind Among the Reeds 69 ) where,
according to his Autobiographies, strange lights were appearing Yeats himself as
a boy saw a small light climbing up the hill, which in five minutes it reached
the summit, and I [Yeats], who had often climbed the mountain, knew that no human
footstep was so speedy (Autobiographies 9 6) Places fabled with legends like this
completed the picture of the Otherworld and made it more real.# Moreover, all three
mentioned animals have symbolic meanings tying them to the Otherworld in some way:
heron being a bird which exists in several elements, became the bird to symbolize
the Otherworld (Monaghan 245); water-rat itself has no special symbolic meaning
but it is close to an otter, which was an animal to whom powers of the Otherworld
were ascribed, and who, like men, lived in their own kingdoms and were virtually
invulnerable (Monaghan 37 1); the trout had a special rank among the fish of
Ireland Yeats includes among his Fairy and Folk Tales of Irish Peasantry Samuel
Lovers story A White Trout; a Legend of Cong (43-45), in which a caught trout
changes into a beautiful lady; in his notes to the story he claims that these
trout stories are common all over Ireland. Many holy wells are haunted by such
blessed trout (45). Moreover, this motif reappears in his own poetry in The Song
of Wandering Aengus the Master of Love Angus caught a little silver trout, who
consequently changed into a glimmering girl and left him hopelessly enchanted.#
Yeats in his Autobiographies comments on his conscious effort to acquire a cold
style: I deliberately reshaped my style, deliberately sought out an impression as
of cold light and tumbling clouds (9 1); this is, it might be argued, the style in
which the fairy world is described.# Sometimes the mysterious chill of the
Otherworld is connected to paleness as well as to water in The Land of Hearts
Desire, the fairy child is described in a beautifully chilling simile: Her face
was pale as water before dawn (10).# Abstraction was a theme much discussed by
Yeats in his poems as well as essays. At the time when the The Stolen Child was
written, Yeats still held a positive attitude towards abstraction; he was exalting
the Celtic passion for abstract right and the capability of having abstract
emotions, as linked to the concept of Irish virtue (Dwan, Abstract Hatred 24),
which made the Irish special and distinguished them from the other more
successful, and practical races (Yeats qtd. in Dwan Abstract Hatred 24). Later,
however, Yeats became famous for his negative attitude towards abstraction in
nationalism and the capability of Celtic nations of abstract hatred; by 19 09 he
claimed that Ireland was ruined by abstraction (qtd. Dawn Abstract Hatred
19 ). In his essay on J.M. Synge, he writes that in Ireland abstract thoughts are
raised up between men's minds and Nature until minds in a land that has given
itself to agitation over-much, abstract thoughts are raised up between men's minds
and Nature, who never does the same thing twice, or makes one man like another,
till minds cry down natural impulse with the morbid persistence of minds unsettled
by some fixed idea and the defence of that what is so unreal is making the
patriots bitter and restless (The Cutting of an Agate 150).# Moreover, comparing

the moon to a flower enables Yeats to introduce his favourite symbol of the Rose;
which might give the moonlight a more mystical hue, taking into consideration the
connotations Yeatss Rose carries (even though the Rose did not become an
increasingly complex symbol sooner than in 18 9 1 (Jeffares Commentary 22), two
years after publishing of The Wanderings of Oisin), the reader might ascribe this
mystical meaning to the blossoming moon, though originally unintentional. #
Interestingly, in a passage in The Wanderings of Oisn, the love god Aengus
compares in his song mens hearts to fiery dew, which stresses the transcendental
value of dew, as something coming directly form gods: Mens hearts of old were
drops of flame / that from the saffron morning came (Book I, 27 6-7 ).# The phrase
birds of Aengus appears in many Yeatss poems and works among other, in The
Shadowy Waters (41), or in the epic poem Baile and Aillinn, where they can be
seen as patrons of love. According to the mythology, the birds that used to be
with Angus were four of his kisses that turned into birds and that used to be
coming about young men of Ireland, and crying after them (Lady Gregory 66).# The
motif of a souls transformation into a white bird is also used in a poem written
to Maud Gonne, White Birds a love poem, in which he wishes to change into a
bird together with his beloved, in order to escape the weariness (5) and the
fret of the flames (11) of this world: For I would we were changed to white
birds on the wandering foam: I and you! (8 ).# The word psychopomp is not used in
its narrow sense, understood from Greek mythology, as guides of souls into the
Underworld after death, but also on a more general level as guides to the
Otherworld, or just to some other level of being, perhaps seeing it in a slightly
Jungian way, who used the term to describe something within the self of a person
like an anima pointing the way to the highest meaning (Jung 29 ), or the archetype
of and old man, who is the enlightener, the master and teacher, a psychopomp whose
personification (Jung 37 ). # Here is a nice example of the overlapping of
history and mythology. These mounds were usually ancient man-made cairns, or
passage tombs, from the pre-Celtic era (Matson, Roberts 102); it makes sense that
the Tuatha D Danann, in mythology a pre-Celtic (pre-Milesian) people, would find
their home in the burial tombs built by the pre-Celtic men in history.# Yeats
asserts that he believes the host of air and the host of the Sidhe to be the
same, but some writers distinguish between the Sluagh Gaoith, the host of the air,
and Sluagh Sidhe, the host of the Sidhe, and describe the host of the air as of a
peculiar malignancy (Notes to Wind among the Reeds 7 8 ). # A battle among the
Sidhe at a man's death is said to be fought and that is the battle of life and
death (Yeats, Notes to Wind among the Reeds 101).# Size of Irish fairies
disputable they are sometimes little, but often they are thought to be of human
size, this feature being one of the main difference from the English fairies
(Bramsbck 28 ); Yeats explains this discrepancy about the fairies size by the fact
that everything is capricious about them, even their size (Fairy and Folk Tales
12) and they often seem little when first seen, though seeming of common human
height when you are once glamoured (Writings on Folklore 20-21). # This
classification was first published in 18 8 9 in an article of his, Irish Fairies,
Ghosts and Witches; later it constituted an appendix to his compilation Irish
Fairy Tales from 18 9 2.# Where the term Sidhe is used in the thesis, it is usually
meant to denote the inhabitants of the Otherworld in general; it implies the Tuatha
D Danann as well as the fairies.# The desire connected to the Sidhe seems to be
similar to that which Yeats described as characteristic of Rossettis paintings,
where the ecstasy of the lover and of the saint are alike, and desire become
wisdom without ceasing to be desire (Yeats, Ideas of Good and Evil 7 0).# Moreover,
wind is an extremely powerful natural force associating it with Ireland gave the
nation a sense of power. In The Unappeasable Host, wind is the chief symbol, not
only representing the Sidhe, but also demonstrating the power of the mystical
world:
Desolate winds that cry over the wandering seaDesolate winds
that hover in the flaming West;Desolate winds that beat the doors of Heaven and
beatThe doors of Hell and blow there many a whimpering ghost. (7 -10)The triple
anaphora shows that wind is everywhere, being unbound and mighty. By not ending
verse 9 with the object (doors of Heaven), but with the predicate of desolate

winds (beat), the enjambment makes the Heaven and Hell seem relatively
unimportant in comparison to the almighty strength of the wind. The wind even
brings many a whimpering ghost to the doors of Heaven and Hell, which makes it a
kind of psychopomp. #According to Yeatss notes, Sidhe is also Gaelic for wind
(65), but this is not verified otherwise.
# Giving an important voice to the
nature of Ireland meant actually giving power to Ireland itself; as the Irish were
considered to be closely connected to nature, as was said in the previous chapters.
This connection is stressed in the juxtaposition of the reeds and man in the
following verses: The wind is blowing on the waving reeds The wind is blowing on
the heart of man. (The Land of Hearts Desire 24)Both the waving reeds and the
heart of man, being objects of the sentence with the same construction, give the
reader not only an impression of connection, but a vague sense of identification of
the hearts of men and swaying reeds. # In Bates essay, the expression association
between dance and eternity was used to describe a poem by Arthur Symons, but it
might as well describe Yeatss conception of the dance metaphor.# The character of
Caoilte is somewhat problematic in mythology: according to some sources, he and
Oisn were the only members of the Fianna to survive into the days of Christianity
and talked to St. Patrick (MacCana 106) (this is told in the 12th century story
Colloquy of Old Men; however, in Yeatss account of this story, the dialogue occurs
only between Patrick and Oisn); the Celtic Encyclopaedia even hints that the two
Fenian heroes got later merged into one, as Caoilte was displaced by Oisn in most
of the later ballads (MacKillop); this, however, is at odds with Lady Gregorys
Mythology, which was one of Yeatss most likely sources for Caoilte is introduced
as a unique member of the Fianna and his adventures are described at length, side
by side with the adventures of Oisn. When he was old he went into a hill of the
Sidhe to be healed of his old wounds. And whether he came back from there or not is
not known; and there are some who say he used to be talking with Patrick of the
Bells the same time Oisn was with him. But that is not likely, or Oisn would not
have made complaints about his loneliness the way he did (Lady Gregory Gods and
Fighting Men 29 1).# The image of Caoilte tossing his burning hair also comes from
Lady Gregory, as in her book, the mentioned account of Caoiltes appearance to the
king is present and he is described as the very tall man, that was shining like a
burning flame (29 1). # In an essay The Golden Age in The Celtic Twilight there
is a prose passage which corresponds to these verses: The faeries and the more
innocent of the spirits dwelt within it, and lamented over our fallen world in the
lamentation of the wind-tossed reeds, in the song of the birds, in the moan of the
waves, and in the sweet cry of the fiddle (17 4). # Overlapping and inconsistency
is a typical phenomena in Celtic mythology the Celts had no clear
differentiation of divine functions (MacCana 23) and their deities roles
overlapped.# He also provides the reader with an examples from living folklore: I
have heard of the battle over the dying both in County Galway and in the Isles of
Arann, an old Arann fisherman having told me that it was fought over two of his
children, and that he found blood in a box he had for keeping fish, when it was
over.# The last pair of images is not exactly contrasting, but the first image
expresses joy, while the second evokes the feeling of anxiety; therefore arousing
contrasting feelings.# As one of Yeatss favourite rhymes, it connects the child to
its natural surroundings (Kiberd 102).# This can be compared to the desire of The
Man who Dreamt of Faeryland, who also wanted to find love and beauty in the
Otherworld and he never escaped the desire; he found no comfort on the grave
(48 ).########################################################################
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############################ In the poem Fergus and the Druid, the Ulster king
Fergus pursues this higher, invisible level of being. He gives up his crown ,
seeks wisdom and experiences his own personal transcendence by unloosing the
cord, opening a little bag of dreams which wrap him round and give him
insight he did not have before. # Yeatss description of Maud manifests his view
of her as the very ideal of the Otherworldly beauty: I had never thought to see in
a living woman so great beauty. It belonged to famous pictures, to poetry, to some
legendary past. A complexion like the bloom of apples and stature so great that
she seemed of a divine race. Her movements were works of grace she seems like a
goddess. (Yeats Reader)# This is not just the transformation of the mundane world
into the Otherworld in literature in one poem, Yeats describes an apocalyptic
vision of a world where the day sinks, drowned in dew / Being weary of the worlds
empires, bow down to you, / Master of still stars and of the flaming door (The
Valley of the Black Pig 5-8 ). Yeats comments on the poem, asserting that Irish
peasants, those who still labour by the cromlech on the shore (4), have for
generations comforted themselves, in their misfortunes, with visions of a great
battle, to be fought in a mysterious valley called The Valley of the Black Pig,
and to break the last power of their enemies. (Yeats qtd. in Jeffares Commentary
69 ). This, too, is a transformation of the whole society into something grander,
even if mysterious and sinister.##### PAGE
\* MERGEFORMAT #106#
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