Words Alone: Yeats and His Inheritances by R. F. Foster

The following is a short video of R. F. Foster discussion of Yeats and the faerie fascination of years past. Foster's new book, Words Alone: Yeats and His Inheritances, was released this past July.

Book description from the publisher:

Roy Foster's two-volume biography of Yeats was hailed in the New York Review of Books as "a triumph of scholarship, thought, and empathy such as one would hardly have thought possible in this age of disillusion." Now, Foster turns his focus to the largely unacknowledged influences that shaped the young W.B. Yeats.

So dramatic and revolutionary was Yeats' impact on Irish literature that the writers and traditions that preceded him are often overlooked, just as his successors are often overshadowed by his achievement. In Words Alone, Roy Foster explores the Irish literary traditions that preceded Yeats, including romantic "national tales" in post-Union Ireland and Scotland, the nationalist poetry and polemic of the Young Ireland movement, the occult and supernatural fictions of Sheridan LeFanu, the "peasant fictions" of William Carleton, and the fairy-lore and folktale collections Yeats absorbed. As well as placing these nineteenth-century literary movements in a rich contemporary context of politics, polemic, and social tension, Foster discusses recent critical and interpretive approaches to these phenomena. But the unifying theme throughout the book is the self-conscious use Yeats made of his literary predecessors during his own apprenticeship, particularly in the construction of his path-breaking early work. Show More T.S. Eliot famously observed that Yeats was "part of the consciousness of an age which cannot be understood without him," and Foster shows the many ways that Yeats both shaped and was shaped by the age in which he lived, despite his attempts to construct his own literary pedigree and present himself as entirely original.

Returning to the rich seed-bed of nineteenth-century Irish writing, Words Alone draws out themes which had particular resonance for Yeats, offering a new interpretation of the influences surrounding the young poet as he began to "hammer his thoughts into a unity."

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgements
Introduction
1: National Tales and National Futures in Ireland and Scotland after the Union
2: The First Romantics: Young Irelands between Catholic Emancipation and the Famine
3: Lost in the Big House: Anglo-Irishry and the Uses of the Supernatural
4: Oisin Comes Home: Yeats as Inheritor

For a review of the book, check out a review by Adam O'Riordan for The Independent.

And the video:

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Fairytale Reflections (21) Katherine Langrish at SMoST

Alas, most good things must come to an end and a week ago Katherine posted the final Fairytale Reflections, ending fittingly enough with her own: Fairytale Reflections (21) Katherine Langrish. For now, she is going to be changing the focus of SMoST to a book tour and other activities, such as promoting her new book, West of the Moon (it's officially released only in the UK so far, so here's the link). Fairytale Reflections has been a wonderful series and I am sad to see it end for now. Katherine and all the contributing authors were generous with their time and thoughts.

In her fairy tale reflection contribution to the post, Langrish shares the following:

Now here is a coda, or ending, to Fairytale Reflections. And there seemed no better story to write about than the very one which lent me the name for ‘Seven Miles of Steel Thistles’. As I used to say in a paragraph somewhere on the blog (which I removed because I figured by now you’d probably all seen it), the phrase comes from an Irish fairytale called -

THE KING WHO HAD TWELVE SONS

It’s hardly a well known story. I found it because of my habit of picking up shabby-looking books in second hand bookshops: a lovely old book called ‘West Irish Folk-Tales and Romances’ collected and translated by William Larminie (‘with introduction and notes, and appendix containing specimens of the Gaelic originals phonetically spelt.’) It was published by the Camden Library in 1893.

As always, much more to click through and read so do so!
Also, be aware that Katherine posted a short follow-up to this post, Fairytale Reflections - The Djachwi revealed... that will add a little what she discussed in the original post.

Books by Katherine Langrish:

 
  

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Irish Fairy Tale: Connla and the Fairy Maiden

Today for a touch of Irish, I recommend reading a tale with a very long history, Connla and the Fairy Maiden in Celtic Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs.


Before you read it, I recommend reading Jacobs' extensive notes, especially the remarks, which I will share here:

Conn the hundred-fighter had the head-kingship of Ireland 123-157 A.D., according to the Annals of the Four Masters, i. 105. On the day of his birth the five great roads from Tara to all parts of Ireland were completed: one of them from Dublin is still used. Connaught is said to have been named after him, but this is scarcely consonant with Joyce's identification with Ptolemy's Nagnatai (Irish Local Names, i. 75). But there can be little doubt of Conn's existence as a powerful ruler in Ireland in the second century. The historic existence of Connla seems also to be authenticated by the reference to him as Conly, the eldest son of Conn, in the Annals of Clonmacnoise. As Conn was succeeded by his third son, Art Enear, Connla was either slain or disappeared during his father's lifetime. Under these circumstances it is not unlikely that our legend grew up within the century after Conn—i.e., during the latter half of the second century.

As regards the present form of it, Prof. Zimmer (l.c. 261-2) places it in the seventh century. It has clearly been touched up by a Christian hand who introduced the reference to the day of judgment and to the waning power of the Druids. But nothing turns upon this interpolation, so that it is likely that even the present form of the legend is pre-Christian—i.e. for Ireland, pre-Patrician, before the fifth century.

The tale of Connla is thus the earliest fairy tale of modern Europe. Besides this interest it contains an early account of one of the most characteristic Celtic conceptions, that of the earthly Paradise, the Isle of Youth, Tir-na n-Og. This has impressed itself on the European imagination; in the Arthuriad it is represented by the Vale of Avalon, and as represented in the various Celtic visions of the future life, it forms one of the main sources of Dante's Divina Commedia. It is possible too, I think, that the Homeric Hesperides and the Fortunate Isles of the ancients had a Celtic origin (as is well known, the early place-names of Europe are predominantly Celtic). I have found, I believe, a reference to the conception in one of the earliest passages in the classics dealing with the Druids. Lucan, in his Pharsalia (i. 450-8), addresses them in these high terms of reverence:

Et vos barbaricos ritus, morenique sinistrum,
Sacrorum, Druidae, positis repetistis ab armis,
Solis nôsse Deos et coeli numera vobis
Aut solis nescire datum; nemora alta remotis
Incolitis lucis. Vobis auctoribus umbrae,
Non tacitas Erebi sedes, Ditisque profundi,
Pallida regna p tunt: regit idem spiritus artus
Orbe alio: longae, canitis si cognita, vitae
Mors media est.

The passage certainly seems to me to imply a different conception from the ordinary classical views of the life after death, the dark and dismal plains of Erebus peopled with ghosts; and the passage I have italicised would chime in well with the conception of a continuance of youth (idem spiritus) in Tir-na n-Og (orbe alio).

One of the most pathetic, beautiful, and typical scenes in Irish legend is the return of Ossian from Tir-na n-Og, and his interview with St. Patrick. The old faith and the new, the old order of things and that which replaced it, meet in two of the most characteristic products of the Irish imagination (for the Patrick of legend is as much a legendary figure as Oisin himself). Ossian had gone away to Tir-na n-Og with the fairy Niamh under very much the same circumstances as Condla Ruad; time flies in the land of eternal youth, and when Ossian returns, after a year as he thinks, more than three centuries had passed, and St. Patrick had just succeeded in introducing the new faith. The contrast of Past and Present has never been more vividly or beautifully represented.

Jacobs' also states that the tale is "from the old Irish "Echtra Condla chaim maic Cuind Chetchathaig" of the Leabhar na h-Uidhre ("Book of the Dun Cow"), which must have been written before 1106, when its scribe Maelmori ("Servant of Mary") was murdered."

There aren't many tales that feel and read more Irish than this one...fairies and all...

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Irish Cinderella: Fair, Brown and Trembling

With St. Patrick's Day this week emphasizing all things Irish, I would be remiss if I neglected sharing some Irish fairy tales and folklore. I don't have an exact plan, so expect something different each day this week, as well as the ongoing Women and Folklore for Women's History Month.

Today I thought I would share links to one of the best known Irish Fairy Tales: Fair, Brown and Trembling. It is a Cinderella variant which adds to its popularity, but it is also just a plum good tale. I won't sum it up here, but just provide links. A decent summary is available on Wikipedia, but I recommend going to the tale itself and reading it for it's not much longer than its summary.


First of all, you can read the tale in Celtic Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs at Fair, Brown and Trembling as well as Myths and Folklore of Ireland by Jeremiah Curtin at Fair, Brown and Trembling. Jacobs used Curtin as his source, but he also includes some short notes including this reference:

Miss Roalfe Cox is about to publish for the Folk-Lore Society a whole volume of variants of the Cinderella group of stories, which are remarkably well represented in these isles, nearly a dozen different versions being known in England, Ireland, and Scotland.

The forthcoming reference delights me since this book is now well over a hundred years old and available on SurLaLune at Cinderella: 345 Variants by Marian Roalfe Cox. (Someday I might even reformat those pages to the more recent SurLaLune appearance.)

Both Celtic Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs and Myths and Folklore of Ireland by Jeremiah Curtin are in print in paper versions although several versions exist on the web, too, for free reading. They are still two of the best collections of Irish fairy tales despite or perhaps because of their age.


The illustrations in this blog are by John Batten for Jacobs' version of the tale, too.


Fair, Brown & Trembling: An Irish Cinderella Story by Jude Daly is a picture book version of the tale, not very old, but out of print.

PS: It's all for you, Lauren! :)

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