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The Celtic Twilight

W. B. Yeats

Book Overview: 

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.

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. 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.

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.

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Book Excerpt: 
. . .She was poor, but her clothes every day were the same as Sunday, she had such neatness. And if she went to any kind of a meeting, they would all be killing one another for a sight of her, and there was a great many in love with her, but she died young. It is said that no one that has a song made about them will ever live long."

Those who are much admired are, it is held, taken by the Sidhe, who can use ungoverned feeling for their own ends, so that a father, as an old herb doctor told me once, may give his child into their hands, or a husband his wife. The admired and desired are only safe if one says "God bless them" when one's eyes are upon them. The old woman that sang the song thinks, too, that Mary Hynes was "taken," as the phrase is, "for they have taken many that are not handsome, and why would they not take her? And people came from all parts to look at her, and maybe there were some that did not say 'God bless her.'" An old man who lives by. . . Read More

Community Reviews

Una maravilla de libro lleno de relatos y cuenticos típicamente irlandeses contados por gente que vivió las historias o que llegaron de alguna manera a ellos. Anécdotas simpáticas, inquietantes y terroríficas sobre hadas, bosques y reinas de lo más profundo de Irlanda.

The Celtic Twilight (1902) is a book of encounters. The encounters Yeats writes of are the meetings between the Irish people and the faeries, but equally interesting are those other encounters: the meetings between the young Protestant poet and the Catholic Irish who tell him their ancient stories s

I’ve been interested in folklore since I can remember. Irish folklore in particular, while carrying much of the same figures and stories than folklore from adjacent lands, it also quite unique. Yet, as presented here by Yeats, it turns unbelievably magic.

Particularly enchanting is to notice how muc

As a child I was fascinated by words. The etymology of words. The tones. How some words look similar. How some words sound similar. How words...spell. Faerie and Pharoe.

I have also over many years had an interest in different cultures and their similarities. Particularly the Celtic and Egyptian cul

mitolojiden aldığı ilhamla insana kuzeyi yaşatan minik öyküler derlemesi

In his youth Yeats was a member of the Golden Dawn, an occult society; he wrote this book during that time, and it's widely seen as a manifesto about his belief in faeries and magic and such. And it is that - but it's not what you think. When he says
"Let us go forth, the tellers of tales, and seize

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