Other editions of book 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.

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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, ghouls and færies, 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, 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.-- W.B. Yeats

'The Celtic Twilight' can read simply as an anthropological compilation of beliefs and superstitions, a fascinating, entertaining and sometimes hilarious journey through the dreamlike world of Irish faery and folklore, as related to Yeats by the peasants of County Sligo at the end of the nineteenth century. But there is a deeper significance to this book. It can be seen as Yeats' subtle polemic against too concrete a view of human existence, as his call for a return to a more magical view of life and Nature: where the Unseen is nearer than we believe, where springs are holy, trees have souls, and the very air shimmers with spirituality.

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A TELLER OF TALES 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 gentle"—whereby he meant faery—"place 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 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."

Ireland is home to some of the world's most enchanting myths and tales. But many of these stories would have been lost if they hadn't been recorded and written down. Poet and Nobel laureate William Butler Yeats was one of these fortunate witnesses. In "The Celtic Twilight," originally published in 1893, he collected some of the most delightful myths and folktales of his native land.

William Butler Yeats, was an Irish poet and dramatist, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments. 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."