The Celtic Twilight: Faerie and Folklore

by William Butler Yeats

Overview

While best known for his poetry, William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) was also a dedicated exponent of Irish folklore who took a particular interest in the tales' mythic and magical roots. He was, in fact, a ceremonial magician and leader in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, one of the most important esoteric orders in the Western magical tradition. Yeats' influence on other occultists imparted a decidedly Celtic flavor to their practices, just as The Celtic Twilight drew a wider audience to the eerie and puckish world of fairies, ghosts, and spirits. Its title refers to the pre-dawn hours, when the Druids performed their rituals; and the work serves as an affirmation of Yeats' belief in magic as a doorway to the Celtic past. "This handful of dreams," as the author referred to it, first appeared in 1893, and consists of stories recounted to the poet by his friends, neighbors, and acquaintances. Yeats' faithful transcription of their narratives includes his own visionary experiences, appended to the storytellers' words as a form of commentary.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781528772730
Publisher:	Folklore History Series
Publication date:	10/07/2022
Pages:	164
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years Yeats served as an Irish Senator for two terms. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival, and along with Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn founded the Abbey Theatre, serving as its chief during its early years. In 1923, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for what the Nobel Committee described as "inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation." He was the first Irishman so honored. Yeats is generally considered one of the few writers whose greatest works were completed after being awarded the Nobel Prize; such works include The Tower (1928) and The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1929) Yeats was born and educated in Dublin but spent his childhood in County Sligo. He studied poetry in his youth, and from an early age was fascinated by both Irish legends and the occult. Those topics feature in the first phase of his work, which lasted roughly until the turn of the century. His earliest volume of verse was published in 1889, and those slowly paced and lyrical poems display debts to Edmund Spenser and Percy Bysshe Shelley, as well as to the lyricism of the Pre-Raphaelite poets. From 1900, Yeats' poetry grew more physical and realistic. He largely renounced the transcendental beliefs of his youth, though he remained preoccupied with physical and spiritual masks, as well as with cyclical theories of life. Over the years, Yeats adopted many different ideological positions, including, in the words of the critic Michael Valdez Moses, "those of radical nationalist, classical liberal, reactionary conservative and millenarian nihilist".

Table of Contents

	This Book	1
	A Teller of Tales	3
	Belief and Unbelief	5
	Mortal Help	7
	A Visionary	9
	Village Ghosts	13
	"Dust Hath Closed Helen's Eye"	19
	A Knight of the Sheep	26
	An Enduring Heart	29
	The Sorcerers	31
	The Devil	35
	Happy and Unhappy Theologians	36
	The Last Gleeman	40
	Regina, Regina Pigmeorum, Veni	46
	"And Fair, Fierce Women"	49
	Enchanted Woods	51
	Miraculous Creatures	55
	Aristotle of the Books	57
	The Swine of the Gods	58
	A Voice	59
	Kidnappers	60
	The Untiring Ones	66
	Earth, Fire and Water	69
	The Old Town	70
	The Man and His Boots	72
	A Coward	73
	The Three O'Byrnes and the Evil Faeries	74
	Drumcliff and Rosses	76
	The Thick Skull of the Fortunate	82
	The Religion of a Sailor	84
	Concerning the Nearness Together of Heaven, Earth, and Purgatory	85
	The Eaters of Precious Stones	86
	Our Lady of the Hills	87
	The Golden Age	89
	A Remonstrance with Scotsmen for Having Soured the Disposition of Their Ghosts and Faeries	91
	War	94
	The Queen and the Fool	96
	The Friends of the People of Faery	100
	Dreams That Have No Moral	106
	By the Roadside	116
	Into the Twilight	118