William Butler Yeats - The Celtic Twilight

The Celtic Twilight William Butler Yeats [1893, 1902]

This etext corresponds to the second (1902) expanded edition of the Celtic Twilight. This is one of the best-known collections of Yeats prose; in it he explores the longstanding connection between the people of Ireland and the inhabitants of the land of Fairy. Yeats, who had profound mystic and visionary beliefs, writes with conviction of the reality of Fairies, both in his own experience, and in the everyday life of the Irish. This relatively short work serves as a way for readers to discover Yeats powerful wordcraft and get an overview of celtic Fairy lore.

This etext, created at sacred-texts in 2001, was revised in January 2004 from an original copy of the 1902 edition, to include page numbers and correspond more closely to the formatting of the original, and to correct a few transcription errors. It was reformatted in 2009. The Project Gutenberg version of Celtic Twilight is based on the sacred-texts version.

[ii]

BY THE SAME WRITER

THE SECRET ROSE
POEMS
THE WIND AMONG THE REEDS
THE SHADOWY WATERS

[iii]

[iv]

Printed 1893

Reprinted with additions 1902 [v]
Frontispiece

[vi]

Time drops in decay
Like a candle burnt out.
And the mountains and woods
Have their day, have their day;
But, kindly old rout
Of the fire-born moods,
You pass not away.

[vii]

The host is riding from Knocknarea,
And over the grave of Clooth-na-bare;
Caolte tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling, Away, come away;
Empty your heart of its mortal dream.
The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round,
Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound,
Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are a-gleam,
Our arms are waving, our lips are apart,
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.
The host is rushing twixt night and day;
And where is there hope or deed as fair?
Caolte tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling, Away, come away.

[1]

I HAVE desired, like every artist, to create a little world out of the beautiful, pleasant, and significant things of this marred and clumsy world, and to show in a vision something of the face of Ireland to any of my own people who would look where I bid them. I have therefore written down accurately and candidly much that I have heard and seen, and, except by way of commentary, nothing that I have merely imagined. I have, however, been at no pains to separate my own beliefs from those of the peasantry, but have rather let my men and women, dhouls and faeries, go their way unoffended or defended by any argument of mine. The things a man has heard and seen are threads of life, and if he pull them carefully from the confused distaff of memory, any who will can weave them into whatever garments of belief please them best. I too have woven my garment like another, [2] but I shall try to keep warm in it, and shall be well content if it do not unbecome me.

Hope and Memory have one daughter and her name is Art, and she has built her dwelling far from the desperate field where men hang out their garments upon forked boughs to be banners of battle. O beloved daughter of Hope and Memory, be with me for a little.

1893.

I have added a few more chapters in the manner of the old ones, and would have added others, but one loses, as one grows older, something of the lightness of ones dreams; one begins to take life up in both hands, and to care more for the fruit than the flower, and that is no great loss per haps. In these new chapters, as in the old ones, I have invented nothing but my comments and one or two deceitful sentences that may keep some poor story-tellers commerce with the devil and his angels, or the like, [3] from being known among his neighbours. I shall publish in a little while a big book about the commonwealth of faery, and shall try to make it systematical and learned enough to buy pardon for this handful of dreams.

1902.

W. B. YEATS.

[4]

MANY of the tales in this book were told me by one Paddy Flynn, a little bright-eyed old man, who lived in a leaky and one-roomed cabin in the village of Ballisodare, which is, he was wont to say, the most gentlewhereby he meant faeryplace in the whole of County Sligo. Others hold it, however, but second to Drumcliff and Drumahair. The first time I saw him he was cooking mushrooms for himself; the next time he was asleep under a hedge, smiling in his sleep. He was indeed always cheerful, though I thought I could see in his eyes (swift as the eyes of a rabbit, when they peered out of their wrinkled holes) a melancholy which was well-nigh a portion of their joy; the visionary melancholy of purely instinctive natures and of all animals.

And yet there was much in his life to depress him, for in the triple solitude of age, eccentricity, and deafness, he went [5] about much pestered by children. It was for this very reason perhaps that he ever recommended mirth and hopefulness. He was fond, for instance, of telling how Collumcille cheered up his mother. How are you to-day, mother? said the saint. Worse, replied the mother. May you be worse to-morrow, said the saint. The next day Collumcille came again, and exactly the same conversation took place, but the third day the mother said, Better, thank God. And the saint replied, May you be better to-morrow. He was fond too of telling how the Judge smiles at the last day alike when he rewards the good and condemns the lost to unceasing flames. He had many strange sights to keep him cheerful or to make him sad. I asked him had he ever seen the faeries, and got the reply, Am I not annoyed with them? I asked too if he had ever seen the banshee. I have seen it, he said, down there by the water, batting the river with its hands.

I have copied this account of Paddy [6] Flynn, with a few verbal alterations, from a note-book which I almost filled with his tales and sayings, shortly after seeing him. I look now at the note-book regretfully, for the blank pages at the end will never be filled up. Paddy Flynn is dead; a friend of mine gave him a large bottle of whiskey, and though a sober man at most times, the sight of so much liquor filled him with a great enthusiasm, and he lived upon it for some days and then died. His body, worn out with old age and hard times, could not bear the drink as in his young days. He was a great teller of tales, and unlike our common romancers, knew how to empty heaven, hell, and purgatory, faeryland and earth, to people his stories. He did not live in a shrunken world, but knew of no less ample circumstance than did Homer himself. Perhaps the Gaelic people shall by his like bring back again the ancient simplicity and amplitude of imagination. What is literature but the expression of moods by the vehicle [7] of symbol and incident? And are there not moods which need heaven, hell, purgatory, and faeryland for their expression, no less than this dilapidated earth? Nay, are there not moods which shall find no expression unless there be men who dare to mix heaven, hell, purgatory, and faeryland together, or even to set the heads of beasts to the bodies of men, or to thrust the souls of men into the heart of rocks? Let us go forth, the tellers of tales, and seize whatever prey the heart long for, and have no fear. Everything exists, everything is true, and the earth is only a little dust under our feet.