'
THE SONG OF WANDERING AENGUS (p.
THE SONG OF WANDERING AENGUS (p.
Yeats
.
.
cheeks red
like foxglove in flower. . . . Ireland is beautiful, but not so beautiful
as the Great Plain I call you to. The beer of Ireland is heady, but
the beer of the Great Plain is much more heady. How marvellous is the
country I am speaking of! Youth does not grow old there. Streams with
warm flood flow there; sometimes mead, sometimes wine. Men are charming
and without a blot there, and love is not forbidden there. O woman,
when you come into my powerful country you will wear a crown of gold
upon your head. I will give you the flesh of swine, and you will have
beer and milk to drink, O beautiful woman. O beautiful woman, come with
me!
'
THE SONG OF WANDERING AENGUS (p. 11).
The Tuatha De Danaan can take all shapes, and those that are in the
waters take often the shape of fish. A woman of Burren, in Galway,
says, 'There are more of them in the sea than on the land, and they
sometimes try to come over the side of the boat in the form of fishes,
for they can take their choice shape. ' At other times they are
beautiful women; and another Galway woman says, 'Surely those things
are in the sea as well as on land. My father was out fishing one night
off Tyrone. And something came beside the boat that had eyes shining
like candles. And then a wave came in, and a storm rose all in a
minute, and whatever was in the wave, the weight of it had like to sink
the boat. And then they saw that it was a woman in the sea that had the
shining eyes. So my father went to the priest, and he bid him always to
take a drop of holy water and a pinch of salt out in the boat with him,
and nothing could harm him. '
The poem was suggested to me by a Greek folk song; but the folk belief
of Greece is very like that of Ireland, and I certainly thought, when
I wrote it, of Ireland, and of the spirits that are in Ireland. An old
man who was cutting a quickset hedge near Gort, in Galway, said, only
the other day, 'One time I was cutting timber over in Inchy, and about
eight o'clock one morning, when I got there, I saw a girl picking nuts,
with her hair hanging down over her shoulders; brown hair; and she had
a good, clean face, and she was tall, and nothing on her head, and
her dress no way gaudy, but simple. And when she felt me coming she
gathered herself up, and was gone, as if the earth had swallowed her
up. And I followed her, and looked for her, but I never could see her
again from that day to this, never again. '
The county Galway people use the word 'clean' in its old sense of fresh
and comely.
HE MOURNS FOR THE CHANGE THAT HAS COME UPON HIM AND HIS BELOVED,
AND LONGS FOR THE END OF THE WORLD (p.
like foxglove in flower. . . . Ireland is beautiful, but not so beautiful
as the Great Plain I call you to. The beer of Ireland is heady, but
the beer of the Great Plain is much more heady. How marvellous is the
country I am speaking of! Youth does not grow old there. Streams with
warm flood flow there; sometimes mead, sometimes wine. Men are charming
and without a blot there, and love is not forbidden there. O woman,
when you come into my powerful country you will wear a crown of gold
upon your head. I will give you the flesh of swine, and you will have
beer and milk to drink, O beautiful woman. O beautiful woman, come with
me!
'
THE SONG OF WANDERING AENGUS (p. 11).
The Tuatha De Danaan can take all shapes, and those that are in the
waters take often the shape of fish. A woman of Burren, in Galway,
says, 'There are more of them in the sea than on the land, and they
sometimes try to come over the side of the boat in the form of fishes,
for they can take their choice shape. ' At other times they are
beautiful women; and another Galway woman says, 'Surely those things
are in the sea as well as on land. My father was out fishing one night
off Tyrone. And something came beside the boat that had eyes shining
like candles. And then a wave came in, and a storm rose all in a
minute, and whatever was in the wave, the weight of it had like to sink
the boat. And then they saw that it was a woman in the sea that had the
shining eyes. So my father went to the priest, and he bid him always to
take a drop of holy water and a pinch of salt out in the boat with him,
and nothing could harm him. '
The poem was suggested to me by a Greek folk song; but the folk belief
of Greece is very like that of Ireland, and I certainly thought, when
I wrote it, of Ireland, and of the spirits that are in Ireland. An old
man who was cutting a quickset hedge near Gort, in Galway, said, only
the other day, 'One time I was cutting timber over in Inchy, and about
eight o'clock one morning, when I got there, I saw a girl picking nuts,
with her hair hanging down over her shoulders; brown hair; and she had
a good, clean face, and she was tall, and nothing on her head, and
her dress no way gaudy, but simple. And when she felt me coming she
gathered herself up, and was gone, as if the earth had swallowed her
up. And I followed her, and looked for her, but I never could see her
again from that day to this, never again. '
The county Galway people use the word 'clean' in its old sense of fresh
and comely.
HE MOURNS FOR THE CHANGE THAT HAS COME UPON HIM AND HIS BELOVED,
AND LONGS FOR THE END OF THE WORLD (p.
