"Man can embody truth but not know it."
W. B. Yeats

What made people like W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory collect and publish the folklore of the Irish? In May 1911 Yeats was in Paris, meeting with Ezra Pound and working with Lady Gregory on, "the big book on Fairy Belief that we have been doing for years." Yeats continued that, "My part is to show that what we call Fairy Belief is exactly the same thing as English and American spiritualism except that fairy belief is very much more charming." The 'big book' finally appeared in 1920. Yeats also believed that these folk tales represented 'an ancient system of belief', which had been overlaid by the later Christianity. He was dismissive of much of traditional fairy literature, "The personages of English fairy literature are merely ... mortals beautifully masquerading. Nobody ever believed in such stories. They are romantic bubbles from Provence ..."

To Yeats there was some reality behind the Fairy Lore he and his faithful companion Lady Gregory spent so much time and so many years investigating. For Yeats 'reality' was not in the 'artificial' world of formal literature, but amongst the tales of the Irish peasants.

"I am very religious and deprived by Huxley and Tyndall, whom I detested, of the simple-minded religion of my childhood. I had made a new religion almost an infallible church of poetic tradition of a fardel of stories and of personages and of emotions inseparable from their first expression and passed on from generation to generation."
'The Trembling of the Veil' (1922)

Yeats was also working at an exciting time. Not long before his birth, the first scholarly translations of the Irish mythological texts began to appear in English. Yeats often insisted that only Greece could rival Celtic mythology in its exuberance and power.

By 1893 Yeats had just completed a major study on William Blake (Yeats always referred to Blake as his 'master') and wrote that he took folklore to be an affirmation of the 'ancient supremacy of imagination'. He said that Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe, Blake and Keats were 'little more than folklorists with musical tongues'. It's themes could bring life to his own visions of what his verse and drama should represent.

Mary Helen Thuente (W.B. Yeats and Irish Folklore) has emphasized the large debt that W. B. Yeats owed to John O'Leary in his developing interest in folklore. They first met in 1885, when O'Leary had returned to Dublin after 5 years imprisonment in England and 13 years exile in France, after taking part in an uprising against the English in 1867. Yeats gives a vivid picture of O'Leary's house, "The material for many a song and ballad has come from Mr. John O'Leary's fine collection of Irish books, the best I know. The whole house is full of them. One expects to find them bulging out the windows." (written in 1889)

Yeats interest in folklore also coincided with the rise of Irish Nationalism and his own part in it. He had a feeling amongst a group of younger Irish writers that they could go back to their roots in order to go forward.

Yeats first met Lady Augusta Gregory (formally Lady Gregory) in their correspondence. Her full name was Isabella Augusta Persse Gregory (1852 - 1932) in the summer of 1896. She was 44, and she had, by then, been a widow for four years. Foster describes her as, "Plain, decisive and masterful, she never lost a certain air of the evangelically minded county lady, but this was only one side of a complex personality." Like many literary and artistic people of that time she discovered Celtic folklore and by the time Yeats met her she had begun to learn Irish. Within a year of meeting Yeats she would begin to publish articles on fairy traditions, folk tales and language revival in the Spectator, Nineteenth Century and Westminster Budget, as well as in Irish outlets like the Kilkenny Moderator and Dublin Daily Express.' (Foster)

Yeats was enthusiastic about her work. In 1902, when her Cuchulain of Muirthemne appeared, Yeats wrote that 'she will have given Ireland its Mabinogian, it's Morte d'Arthur, its Nibelungenliad.' From 1896 a long friendship began (though they had met briefly in 1894). This was a time of great strain and emotion for Yeats as his love for Maud Gonne seemed to him so hopeless and the bitterness of youth seemed to be turning into the bitterness of manhood. Lady Gregory recognized this and in a very real sense mothered him back to health with 'cups of broth, wood and lake, good company and the collecting of folk beliefs in the surrounding cottages.'

As Foster puts it, "... she provided access to local Galway tradition, through the Irish language but from a Big House perspective ...". They collaborated on that great work 'Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland'. At first it was seen as a book, but Yeats published six long articles between 1897 and 1902. As far as she was concerned these articles were joint efforts. Then finally in 1920 the complete work we now have was published.

Some of these articles caused a controversy and clerical criticism that today we would find hard to understand. The 'Tribes of Danu', published in November 1897, for instance, was criticized by comparing the doctrine of transubstantiation with the sighting of fairies. He also did not condemn paganism, as many of his critics would have liked, in fact quite the opposite, as he wrote much later in his life.

"My object was to find actual experience of the supernatural, for I did not believe, nor do I know, that it is possible to discover in the textbooks of the schools, in the manuals sold by religious booksellers, even in the subtle reverie of saints, the most violent force in history ... when we passed the door of some peasant's cottage, we passed out of Europe as that word is understood. 'I have longed', she said once {Lady Gregory], 'to turn Catholic, that I might be nearer to the people, but you have taught me that Paganism brings me nearer still'."

In addition, it is hard now to realize in what derision 'Irish literature' was held in the 19th century. England had banned the very teaching of the Irish language, and one English historian described the Irish epics as 'ridiculous bombast'. Even as late as 1900, Robert Atkinson working in Trinity College, Dublin, and an authority on Middle Irish manuscripts gave this opinion on early Irish literature, "It has scarcely been touched by the movement of the great literature, it is the untrained popular feeling ... it is almost intolerably low in tone ... and every now and then ... goes down lower than low ..." Irish oral traditions were often considered debased superstitions. The earliest collectors were often motivated by a love of what they saw as nostalgic antiquities collected from the superstitious, sentimental peasantry, still normally depicted as a buffoon in England. These essays were collected from the local people around the Gort area. Lady Gregory tended to tell them straight with only a few comments. She has left some brief accounts of collecting the material for her books:

"I have spent two long afternoons at the Workhouse [in Claregalway], and have got almost more stories than I can write down. Most of them folk-lore - I mean giant killer - but no doubt they will come in useful, and one or two are very good. I am going to ransack Oughterard this week."

"I have just come back from a long tiring day at Claregalway - where I was looking for Finn legends. I got at last a good many written out in a M.S. book, an old man has lent it to me. I was at Oughterard for a night, and go again tomorrow, an old man there has a long poem, but very few teeth, and the Moycullen priest, an Irish expert is coming to help tomorrow."

"I have had rather an amusing time hunting up folk-lore, though not much of it was useful, but one gets odds and ends. I went 8 miles yesterday to see a man I heard of, and got nothing - for as one old woman in the house said confidently 'he is no good when he is in his mind and in his sense, but when he has a drop of drink he's grand!'. However he sent me to another man who lent me his M.S. book which may contain treasures. I have done some reading in the college also. Now I must go home and look after housekeeping."

(the above quoted by Daniel Murphy in his foreword to Lady Gregory's 'Gods and Fighting Men')

It was Yeats who added his own knowledge and experiences of the occult and a gloss from the then very popular Max Muller and James Frazer (whose Golden Bough, influenced so many, including this writer, largely discredited as it is now by folklorists and mythologists). This can be seen in each work that Yeats published. 'Fairy and Folk Tales' and 'Irish Fairy Tales' are edited (often to highlight the better sides of Irish character) tales from earlier writers. By the time he produced 'Celtic Twilight' his own voice and experiences come to the fore. In 'Celtic Twilight' it is the character of the Irish peasant that is often featured and by the 1902 edition the fairy lore, that at first he was so fascinated by, faded to be replaced by tales of the people and a new emphasis on Celtic mythology which became more and more prominent until it dominated the later essays. The earlier works emphasized a straight Irish angle with little mention of other cultures. By 1902, Yeats was comparing Irish folklore and mythology to similar tales in other parts of the world.

This was not a new trend. In Joseph Jacobs, for instance, each tale is given its parallels and today's folklorists use a complex typology based mainly on the work of Antti Arne and Stith Thompson (The Types of the Folktale).

Folklore also gave Yeats a voice. Many commentators have noticed the influences of Anglo-Irish dialect on his work. Much of the source of his materials came from original Irish materials of folklore and mythology.

"The fairies had been the subject of many of the poems which Yeats wrote in the late 1880's, but gradually the peasantry replaced the fairies as the major Irish subject of Yeats poetry... Yeats had declared in 1892 that 'He who studies the legends, the history, and life of his own countryside may find there all the themes of art and song.' By the end of the decade the legends most associated with ancient Ireland had become his major interest, and the gods and heroes of ancient Ireland replaced both the fairies and the peasantry as Yeats major Irish subject matter... As Yeats knowledge of the ancient gods and heroes increased, so too did his use of them in his writings. The notes on Irish myth which Yeats appended to his poems became longer with each succeeding collection in the 1890's."
Mary Helen Thuente: W. B. Yeats and Irish Folklore

At least part of the reason for this was Yeats search for an occult knowledge lying behind these tales. He realized that it was in the myths and legends of Ireland, rather than the peasants and their tales. There the fairies became gods and the peasants heroes. Lady Gregory showed him that the ancient tales of heroes were still alive in the oral traditions that she so brilliantly recorded.

"When he praised Lady Gregory's collections for their extravagance and symbolism, their heroic passions and wildness and their mythological and visionary dimensions it is apparent he has finally found the combination of ancient wisdom and heroic passion he had been seeking."

Mary Helen Thuente: W. B. Yeats and Irish Folklore

In connection with Yeats use of oral materials his poetry and plays were designed to be read out loud. He emphasized that his works were recorded speech, or even songs, as their is evidence that many were composed to a tune (Yeats had a deep knowledge of Gaelic folk songs). Yeats believed that the power of Greek and Irish literature could be traced to their oral traditions, where as English and Roman literature were based on the written word.

And he knew the area well - here from Evans-Wentz :

"And it is evident from this that the well spirits were even identified in Ireland with the Tuatha De Danann or Fairy Folk. I am reminded of a walk I was privileged to take with Mr. William B. Yeats on Lady Gregory’s estate at Coole Park, near Gort (County Galway) for Mr. Yeats led me to the haunts of the water spirits of the region, along a strange river which flows underground for some distance and then comes out to the light again in it's weird course, and to a dark, deep pool hidden in the forest. According to tradition, the river is the abode of water fairies and in the shaded forest pool, whose depth is very great, live a spirit race like the Greek nymphs. More than one mortal while looking into this pool has felt a sudden and powerful impulse to plunge in for the fairies were then casting their magic spell over him that they might take him to live in their underwater palace for ever."

Evans-Wentz: The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries (1911).

Lady Gregory was the one who could speak Irish and had the influence to get the local people to speak (Yeats complained that he found it difficult even to understand their accent). His crow black clothes often led him to be mistaken for a clergy man, and that was not someone the local people would discuss their fairy beliefs with, due to centuries of condemnation from the Roman Catholic church.

Analysis of the sources of Yeats folklore seems to reveal that in the earlier stories he relied heavily on earlier literature, even if at times he heavily edited it for his own use. As he became more involved with Lady Gregory (and Douglas Hyde) more original oral folklore is included, but literary allusions, sometimes very obscured, are still there. It is still an open question how many peasants really opened themselves up to him. Many of the stories and incidents he relates seem to have come from the same few people and it is difficult to know how representative they were of the overall beliefs of the people.

Over 60% of the Irish peasants could read in English, and that over 300,000 chap books (cheap tales circulated by bookshops and itinerant sellers) were produced in each year, and eagerly read, in the later 19th century. How much did these influence the tales of the people that were told to the later collectors?

How close could Yeats ever really get to the peasants, with his cosmopolitan ways and search for a 'greater truth' behind the tales? Generally not finding this, his later works reflect much more emphasis on the fairies being equated with the occult and ancient Irish Gods (The Sidhe). Douglas Hyde was also important to their group. Lady Gregory first met him at Tulira. He was collecting folklore at Craughwell, and Lady Gregory was so taken with him, she spent the afternoon showing him the cromlech at Craugh, and introducing him to Foley, one of her (Irish-speaking) laborers who gave him a new story of the Fianna. They became good friends, with mutual interests. When Lady Gregory died, Yeats wrote that he feared that the 'subconscious drama that was my imaginative life ended]' at her death.

Yeats had grown up in the countryside of County Sligo where folktales, legends and stories of ghosts and hero's were still abundant. From his earliest times his artistic family had visited the area frequently and he lived there permanently for two years, from the age of 7 till he was 9. Even at this age Yeats seems to have loved these stories and talking to the country people, though he spoke English, not Irish. Evans-Wentz also found the area around Ben Bulben 'full of fairy lore', when he was collecting fairy folklore in 1911.

The influence of Sligo on Yeats shouldn't be underestimated. His memories of going by sea from Liverpool to Sligo (a trip that could take from 24 to 40 hours) were still vivid with him in old age. The strange flat mountain Ben Bulben, the gleaming white houses and Fuschia hedges of Rosses Point, and Sligo itself; it's noisy quay and fascinating market, organs playing and riders on wild horses. He remembers visiting his Aunt Mickey in her cottage at Seaview and hunting mushrooms, watching maids scour oaken milk kneelers with fine white sand, clothes being hung to dry on briar bushes and the men stepping and swinging their scythes in a ten acre meadow, "like a dance in perfect time."

When he was sixteen, a Great Frost froze Lough Gill near Sligo, all seven miles of it, and with his sisters he learned to skate and to explore the lakes wooded islands. A year later he is sleeping out at nights in a cave among sea cliffs, or amongst rocks and rhododendrons in the wild grounds of Castle Howth. He says that about this time he began to pretend to be a "sage, a magician or a poet." The idea of the magician-poet, an idea that never left him, Yeats said came from his father's reading him Sir Walter Scott's Lay of the Last Ministrel. Later, inspired by Thoreau's Walden, he longed to live in a cottage on Innisfree, a little island in Lough Gill where he could dream, and having abandoned women and love, seek true wisdom.

Yeats thought seriously about the peasant visions he heard about and tried to relate them to his own feelings and connections with nature and the supernatural, as well as those of his cousin Lucy Middleton. He remembers seeing the earth under some trees ablaze with light and then a brilliant torch moving along the river. He saw an eerie light start to climb the cairn on Knocknarea and timed it as five minutes to climb to the top, impossible for any human. Stimulated by these experiences he began to question the old men and women, as he would do much more seriously later on, and wandered the nearby fairy hills and raths.

He attended his first Spiritualist seance (with his friend Katherine Tynan) at the age of twenty, but it went badly and scared him for some years when his own hands and shoulders twitched so much that he broke the table. But the experience itself helped him to see his earlier experiences in a wider light, and like Andrew Lang, he would meld Spiritualist philosophy and the Theosophy he absorbed from Madame Blavatsky into his own world view and relate them to the folklore he had heard.

By 22, Yeats now back in London with his family writes:

"... I had made a new religion, almost an infallible church of poetic tradition; of a fardel of stories, personages and of emotions; inseparable from their first expression, passed on from generation to generation by poets and painters with some help from philosophers and theologians. I wished for a world where I could discover this tradition perpetually."

For him, art and religion were inseparable. He was helped in his views by his Uncle George Pollexfen and by his Uncle's old servant Mary Battle, who was clairvoyant and often shared in the visions that Yeats and his Uncle were creating between them in long walks by the sea. This helped convince Yeats that these visions related directly to those of the country people around them. He wrote of a tradition of belief older than any European Church and "founded upon the experience of the world before the modern bias."

It has been commented that for Yeats, his folklore researches helped him to define the relations in his own world between these vast, fluid dream worlds and the life that went on around him. He seemed to particularly love the stories of changelings and kidnaped babies, youths and brides. For Yeats, as for many occultists, these worlds were underneath and intertwined with our own. It was how we looked at things that made the difference. As he wrote in 'The Shadowy Waters Introductory Rhymes':



All the mind needs to do is to shift focus to see a whole new world that lies just under the surface of our own and one might hope to join that world, though it was often emphasized at a potential risk to body and soul.

Towards the end of his life he realized that in collecting folklore (with Lady Gregory) it had been the catalyst not the answers which he so earnestly sought throughout his life:

"... got down, as it were into some fibrous darkness, into some matrix out of which everything has come; ... but there was always something lacking."

He goes on to say that the answer was his Swami (Shri Purohit Swami). What Yeats was always looking for, and sought in so many ways (and developed at length in his book 'The Vision'), was unity, a merger of spirit and the human experience. Spiritual experience was 'above' mere intellect, and, as he discovered, had at it's root, love. Real love, not the human fumbling that so often passed for love, but the love that lay at the heart of ALL things, metaphysical love.