¹ (London, Kegan Paul, Trench & Co.)

² (London, T. Fisher Unwin.)

³ Ibid., p. 286.

⁴ E.g., The Collected Works in Verse and Prose (Stratford-on-Avon, 1908), i, 244, “[I took] ‘The Wanderings of Oisin’ from a Gaelic poem of the eighteenth century and certain Middle Irish poems in dialogue”; Early Poems and Stories (London, 1925), p. 527, “The Wanderings of Usheen … was first published in a book called ‘The Wanderings of Usheen’ in 1889”; Collected Poems (New York, 1935), p. 456, has the same information as the 1895 Poems.

⁵ Kuno Meyer and Alfred Nutt, The Voyage of Bran (London, 1895), pp. 149–151; John Arnot MacCulloch, The Mythology of All Races, iii, “Celtic” (Boston, 1918), p. 180.

⁶ Sir James Ware, ed., Ancient Irish Histories of Spenser, Campion, Hanmer, and Marleborrough, 2 vols. (Dublin, 1809), i, pt. 2, 33.

⁷ W. B. Yeats, “What is ‘Popular Poetry‘?,” Essays (New York, 1924), p. 3, speaking of himself and other members of a Young Ireland Society: “We had no Gaelic …”

⁸ Transactions of the Ossianic Society, For the Year 1856, iv (Dublin, 1859), 230–279.

⁹ Gaelic Union Publications (Dublin, 1880).

¹⁰ The figures refer to page and line numbers in Trans, of the Oss. Soc, iv.

¹¹ The quotations are from the edition of 1889. The figures are Part and line numbers.

¹² Some additional parallels are Comyn's description of Niam's horse (237, 3–4, 25–27, cf. Yeats, i, 29, 32–36); Finn's questionings of her and her answers (Comyn, 239, 5, 8–9, 12–15, 18, 27; 241, 1, 3–5, 8–12, cf. Yeats, i, 66–67, 71–75, 77–78, 81–86, 90–93); Niam's description of the Land of Youth and what awaits Oisin there (Comyn, 241, 27–28; 243, 5, 8, 13–16, 26–27; 245, 1, 4–6; cf. Yeats, i, 101–102, 108, 110–111, 114–118, 120–121, 123–124, 128); Oisin's farewell to the Fenians (Comyn, 245, 23–28; 247, 13, cf. Yeats, i, 136–143); Oisin's remembrance of days with the Fenians (Comyn, 247, 21–24, cf. Yeats, i, 154, 156–159); some of Oisin's bickering with Patrick (Comyn, 247, 25–26; 271, 9–12, cf. Yeats, i, 164–165, iii, 157, 160).

¹³ For one of the best treatments of the dialogues see Standish Hayes O'Grady, ed. and trans., Silva Gadelica, ii (London, 1892), pp. 101–265.

¹⁴ In vol. i is “The Battle of Gabhra,” ed. by Nicholas O'Kearney (Dublin, 1854); in vol. iii, “The Lament of Oisin After the Fenians,” ed. by Standish Hayes O'Grady (Dublin, 1857); in vol. iv, “The Dialogue of Oisin and Patrick,” ed. by John O'Daly (Dublin, 1859).

¹⁵ Miss Brooke (Dublin, 1789); Drummond (Dublin, 1852); Simpson (Dublin, 1857); De Vere, The Collected Works (London, 1895), ii, 163–194. “Oiseen the Bard” appeared first in 1874 in The Legends of St. Patrick.

¹⁶ (London, 1878), i, 36–38.

¹⁷ (London, 1881), i, 346–350.

¹⁸ Other parallels are another lament of Oisin for his youth (Oss. Soc, iii, 273, 5, cf. Yeats, iii, 218); and another picturing by Patrick of Finn in hell (Oss. Soc, iv, 45, 17–18, cf. Yeats, iii, 213). And from the Oisin-Patrick dialogue as given by O'Grady in his History of Ireland: Critical and Philosophical, i, 347, Yeats apparently took the line “O Conan the foul-mouthed, how welcome now would be to me thy gibes and bitter speech” that he makes into “Ah, sweet to me now were even bald Conan's slanderous tongue” (iii, 116).

¹⁹ Patrick Kennedy uses the same names and others in his “The Youth of Oisin,” Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts (London, 1866; 2nd ed., London, 1891), p. 209: “his [Finn's] favourite hounds—Brann, Sceoluing, Lomaire, Brod, and Lomluath.” Similarity of spelling points, however, to the given source.

²⁰ S. H. O'Grady, Silva Gadelica, ii, 391–392.

²¹ Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry (London), p. 200. There is in the lines quoted a hint of a plan slightly different from the one he finally adopted for “The W's of Oisin.” In the same note is an outline of the story of “Oisen” (sic) which says simply that Oisen lived for three hundred years in the Land of Youth with Niam, returned to Ireland, where the moment his foot touched the ground he grew aged, and told his story to Patrick. The “island of the living [and] the island of victories” he probably got from O'Looney's preface to the translation of Comyn (Oss. Soc, iv, 230), that the Irish elysium is “supposed to be divided into different states and provinces … such as ‘Land of Youth,’ ‘Land of the Living,’ ‘land of Virtues,’ and several others … the ‘Land of Virtues’ [is called by some] the ‘Land of Victories’.”

²² Pp. 201–203.

²³ 3 vols. (London, 1825–28), i (2nd ed., London, 1826), pp. 317–320.

²⁴ Croker, op. cit., i, 309–316; O'Looney, op. cit., pp. 230–233.

²⁵ P. 233.

²⁶ Ibid. This variant bears some relation to the tale Croker mentions, op. cit., i, 303, as follows: “Barry, the historical painter … used to relate … an Irish fairy legend, which closely resembled the Adventures of Porsenna, king of Russia, published in the sixth volume of Dodsley's Poetical Collection.” (London, 1785, pp. 178–210. By the Rev. Dr. Lisle.) Porsenna, through a series of adventures, is flown by Zephyr to the bowers of the princess Felicity, where he stays three hundred years that seem to him but three months. She gives him, when he wishes to visit his country, a magic steed, Grisippo; her warning is somewhat unique:

After he has seen to his realm, he will return. On the way to his palace he meets a wagon full of wings, overturned; beneath lies the driver, old and weak. Porsenna, appealed to, releases him; the old man, who is Time, thereupon seizes the king and chokes him to death. Zephyr bears the corpse back to Felicity. The same story is told by Henry Chas. Foote in “The Neo-Latin Fay,” The Folk-Lore Record (London, 1879), ii, 9–11; Yeats probably knew it (v. note 61, below, and text).

²⁷ P. 212.

²⁸ (London, 1879; 3rd ed., London, 1914), pp. 385–399. It was one of the best-known Irish books of its day. Tennyson got his “Voyage of Maeldune” from it (v. note 44, below).

²⁹ (London, 1866), pp. 240–242. He reprints in the Fairy and Folk Tales four stories from Legendary Fictions: “The Kildare Pooka,” “The Witches' Excursion,” “The Long Spoon,” and “The Enchantment of Gearoidh Iarla.”

³⁰ (Dublin, 1871), pp. 142–151.

³¹ 2 vols. (New York and London, 1890), i, 150. This note was probably written about 1888, since in his “Four Years: 1887–1891” (Autobiographies, New York, 1927), p. 184, he says, “I was compiling … an anthology of Irish fairy stories, and … a two-volume selection from the Irish novelists.” Apparently he did the work for both books at the same time, and Fairy and Folk Tales came out in 1888.

³² (London.)

³³ (London), pp. 116–118.

³⁴ P. 141. He read Kickham for Representative Irish Tales; the selections from Kickham, however, do not include the incident of the Fox Hunter {Rep. Ir. Tales, II, 245 ff.). In the version of the Fox Hunter ballad in The Countess Kathleen there is one stanza, the next to the last, that is completely changed in all subsequent printings. It is closer to part of the Kickham incident than the revision of it.

³⁵ Charles J. Kickham, Knocknagow (Dublin, 1879; 26th ed., Dublin, c. 1887), pp. 482–486.

³⁶ LI. 462–469. These lines, plus the next four,

are revised in all subsequent printings, beginning with that of Poems (1895), to:

³⁷ The supposition is reasonable, for since the date of “The W's of Oisin” is 1889, and “The Ballad” appeared in East and West for November of that year, the order of creation must almost certainly be as I have indicated.

³⁸ See especially his essay, “The Poetry of Sir Samuel Ferguson,” Dublin University Review, 1886, ii, 923–941.

³⁹ L. 22. Line 63 is almost the same, “We think on Oscar's pencilled urn.” This is in reply to Niam's question of “Why, as ye ride, droops low each head?” (L. 55.)

⁴⁰ Lays of the Western Gael (Dublin, 1865; new ed., Dublin, 1888), 11. 12–15.

⁴¹ i, 201.

⁴² i, 216–221.

⁴³ Vol. 31, 91–110.

⁴⁴ Notes, p. 326. He mentions the 1839 and 1878 volumes particularly; but we are justified in thinking that he went through the others. Or he may have been led to Mac's poem by Eugene O'Curry's note about it in O'Curry's Lectures on the Manuscript Materials of Ancient Irish History (Dublin, 1861), p. 289. Kennedy has two prose tales called “St. Brendain's Voyage” (Legendary Fictions, pp. 299–302; and Bardic Stories, pp. 174–188), that Yeats would have read. Bird islands occur also in “The Voyage of Snedgus and Mac Riagla” and “The Voyage of Mael Duin,” both edited and translated by Whitley Stokes for the Revue Celtique (Paris, 1888, ix, 14–25 and 490 ff.). In the former is an island where a never-decaying tree has its branches filled with beautiful birds of the plain of heaven; in the latter is a mountainous island of many trees and on them many birds. Joyce's “The Voyage of Maildune” in his Old Celtic Romances (pp. 112–176) is the popular version of that story; Tennyson based “The Voyage of Maeldune” on it (The Works of Tennyson, ed. by his son, New York, 1918, pp. 518–521; v. note, pp. 969–970).

⁴⁵ Op. cit., p. 104.

⁴⁶ ii, 162–164; 170–173.

⁴⁷ (Boston, 1876), p. 108. Joyce's Deirdre made a minor sensation in its day. O'Donoghue, Poets of Ireland (Dublin, 1912), article “Robert Dwyer Joyce,” says 10,000 copies sold in a few days; Henry Beers, A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1901), p. 260, praises it and adds that Lowell did too. A sword of Mananan is mentioned twice by S. J. O'Grady, Hist, of Ireland: Crit. and Phil.: Lu, the Longhanded, has the “mountain sundering sword of Mananan, having the brightness and sweep of the rain-bow” (i, 117); and Fergus MacRoy has the “great sword which had been fashioned for him by Mananan the sea-god” (i, 138).

⁴⁸ L. 322.

⁴⁹ L. 342.

⁵⁰ L. 485.

⁵¹ Op. cit., p. 15.

⁵² Ibid., pp. 61–62. No other version of the Deirdre story that I know makes this assertion.

⁵³ Ibid., p. 146.

⁵⁴ Ibid., p. 151.

⁵⁵ Ibid.

⁵⁶ ii, 164–168.

⁵⁷ Robert Dwyer Joyce, Blanic (Boston, 1879), p. 116. O'Grady, History of Ireland (Dublin, 1880), ii, 93, also mentions Mananan's palace: “Mananan, the great sea-god … in his palace reared by magic.”

⁵⁸ Pp. 260–266. From Croker's Fairy Legends and Traditions, etc., ii, 315–324. See pp. 298–314 for additional notes on the Sleepers' legend. An earlier and poorer version of “The Giant's Stairs” is Wm. Hamilton Drummond's The Giant's Causeway (Belfast, 1811), Bk. i, “How Finn and his Warriors Changed to Stone.” Yeats had first used the Seven Sleepers' legend in his “The Island of Statues” (The Dublin University Review, April–July, 1885), wherein the stone statues on an enchanted island are sleepers from ancient time.

⁵⁹ Louise de la Valliere and other Poems (London, 1885), pp. 65–71. Testifying to the currency of the legend is Mrs. Hinkson's note at the end of the poem that it treats of a tale “well known among the peasantry of the north of Ireland … how a band of Irish warriors of the primeval time lie in armour … in one of the hill-caverns … to await the hour of Ireland's redemption, when they will come forth to do battle … under the leadership of the giant Finn … in the hour of victory the phantom knights and their leader will be claimed by death.”

⁶⁰ E.g., Croker's “Owen Lawgoch's Castle” (Fairy Legends, iii, 266–272); Kennedy's “The Enchantment of Gearhoidh Iarla” (Legendary Fictions, pp. 153–155; also in his Legends of Mount Leinster, Dublin, 1855, pp. 181–183); and Lady Wilde's “Rathlinn Island” (Ancient Legends of Ireland, London, 1886; new ed., London, 1902, p. 86).

⁶¹ P. 326.

⁶² No. xxiii (London). “With Especial Reference to the Hypothesis of its Celtic Origin.”

⁶³ P. 123.

⁶⁴ Pp. 190 ff.

⁶⁵ P. 191. A curious mixture of the Oisin and the Seven Sleepers' legend is R. D. Joyce's “The Legend of the Sleeping Monks” in his Legends of the Wars in Ireland (Boston, 1868), pp. 11–15, wherein the abbot Kief and two monks sleep in a wood for three hundred years lulled by the singing of a beautiful bird; one monk awakens at the end of the first hundred years, the other monk at the end of the second hundred, the abbot at the end of the third hundred. After celebrating a final mass at the nearby church, they fall into heaps of dust. William Allingham's “The Abbot of Inisfalen,” Irish Songs and Poems (London, 1887), pp. 104–107, is a variant of the same story, as are Croker's “Clough Na Cuddy,” Fairy Legends, ii, 286–298, and Yeats's “The Story of the Little Bird,” Fairy and Folk Tales, pp. 222–223, taken from a tale by Croker in Amulet for 1827.

⁶⁶ iii, 46–47. In the Glossary to Poems (1895), p. 282, he enters: “bell-branch.—A legendary branch whose shaking cast all men into a gentle sleep.”

⁶⁷ iii, 53–56.

⁶⁸ iii, 67–70.

⁶⁹ iii, 123–124.

⁷⁰ Trans, of the Oss. Soc. For the Year 1855 (Dublin, 1857), iii, 213–229. This is referred to by Nutt, op. cit., pp. 193–194, where he gives a précis of O'Grady's trans.

⁷¹ Ibid., p. 213.

⁷² Ibid.

⁷³ “King Cormac in Fairy Land,” Bardic Stories, pp. 99–103.

⁷⁴ On the Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, 3 vols. (Dublin, 1873), iii, 313–323.

⁷⁵ “The Dedication to a Book of Stories Selected from the Irish Novelists,” Collected Poems (New York, 1938), p. 51. The poem appeared first in 1890 in vol. i of the selections from the novelists. The symbolism of the branch is carried throughout the poem's six stanzas.

⁷⁶ iii, 91–92.

⁷⁷ i, 120.

⁷⁸ II, 93. Yeats says of Balor, Poems (1895), p. 282: “Balor.—The Irish Chimaera, the leader of the hosts of darkness at the great battle of good and evil, life and death, light and darkness, which was fought out on the strands of Moytura, near Sligo.” The story of Balor is told elsewhere, notably by John O'Donovan, Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland by the Four Masters (Dublin, 1851), i, 18 ff.; and O'Curry, Lectures on the Ms. Materials, etc., pp. 249–250; O'Grady, however, is the only one to give most of the detail Yeats uses. “Car-borne” may have come from Macpherson who used it frequently: e.g., “car-borne Cormac,” “car-borne Calmar,” “car-borne Cairbar,” Poems of Ossian (Perth, 1795), i, 196, 198, 209. Yeats apparently knew Ossian for he questioned its authenticity in conversation with Macgregor Mathers, Autobiographies, p. 414. Horace Reynolds discusses the Balor image of Yeats, Letters to the New Island (Cambridge, 1934), p. 22, although he does not give any source.

⁷⁹ “Reveries Over Childhood and Youth,” Autobiographies (New York, 1927), p. 125. “Reveries” was first published in 1915.

⁸⁰ Subject of a separate study.

⁸¹ Yeats, op. cit., p. 91.

⁸² Ibid., p. 126.

⁸³ See “Four Years: 1887–1891,” Autobiographies, p. 240. If I read the context correctly it was after. But it is difficult to be sure; Yeats shies away from definite dates.

⁸⁴ Ibid.