The Celtic Twilight

The host is riding from Knocknarea, And over the grave of Clooth-na-bare; Caolte tossing his burning hair, And Niamh calling, "Away, come…

I have desired, like every artist, to create a little world out of the beautiful, pleasant, and significant things of this marred and…

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…

There are some doubters even in the western villages. One woman told me last Christmas that she did not believe either in hell or in…

One hears in the old poems of men taken away to help the gods in a battle, and Cuchullan won the goddess Fand for a while, by helping her…

A young man came to see me at my lodgings the other night, and began to talk of the making of the earth and the heavens and much else. I…

In the great cities we see so little of the world, we drift into our minority. In the little towns and villages there are no minorities;…

I have been lately to a little group of houses, not many enough to be called a village, in the barony of Kiltartan in County Galway, whose…

Away to the north of Ben Bulben and Cope's mountain lives "a strong farmer," a knight of the sheep they would have called him in the Gaelic…

One day a friend of mine was making a sketch of my Knight of the Sheep. The old man's daughter was sitting by, and, when the conversation…

In Ireland we hear but little of the darker powers,1 and come across any who have seen them even more rarely, for the imagination of the…

My old Mayo woman told me one day that something very bad had come down the road and gone into the house opposite, and though she would not…

A mayo woman once said to me, "I knew a servant girl who hung herself for the love of God. She was lonely for the priest and her society,1…

Michael Moran was born about 1794 off Black Pitts, in the Liberties of Dublin, in Faddle Alley. A fortnight after birth he went stone blind…

One night a middle-aged man, who had lived all his life far from the noise of cab-wheels, a young girl, a relation of his, who was reported…

One day a woman that I know came face to face with heroic beauty, that highest beauty which Blake says changes least from youth to age, a…

Last summer, whenever I had finished my day's work, I used to go wandering in certain roomy woods, and there I would often meet an old…

There are marten cats and badgers and foxes in the Enchanted Woods, but there are of a certainty mightier creatures, and the lake hides…

The friend who can get the wood-cutter to talk more readily than he will to anybody else went lately to see his old wife. She lives in a…

A few years ago a friend of mine told me of something that happened to him when he was a. young man and out drilling with some Connaught…

One day I was walking over a bit of marshy ground close to Inchy Wood when I felt, all of a sudden, and only for a second, an emotion which…

A little north of the town of Sligo, on the southern side of Ben Bulben, some hundreds of feet above the plain, is a small white square in…

It is one of the great troubles of life that we cannot have any unmixed emotions. There is always something in our enemy that we like, and…

Some French writer that I read when I was a boy, said that the desert went into the heart of the Jews in their wanderings and made them…

I fell, one night some fifteen years ago, into what seemed the power of faery.

There was a doubter in Donegal, and he would not hear of ghosts or sheogues, and there was a house in Donegal that had been haunted as long…

One day I was at the house of my friend the strong farmer, who lives beyond Ben Bulben and Cope's mountain, and met there a young lad who…

In the dim kingdom there is a great abundance of all excellent things. There is more love there than upon the earth; there is more dancing…

Drumcliff and Rosses were, are, and ever shall be, please Heaven! places of unearthly resort. I have lived near by them and in them, time…

Once a number of Icelandic peasantry found a very thick skull in the cemetery where the poet Egil was buried. Its great thickness made them…

A sea captain when he stands upon the bridge, or looks out from his deck-house, thinks much about God and about the world. Away in the…

In Ireland this world and the world we go to after death are not far apart. I have heard of a ghost that was many years in a tree and many…

Sometimes when I have been shut off from common interests, and have for a little forgotten to be restless, I get waking dreams, now faint…

When we were children we did not say at such a distance from the post- office, or so far from the butcher's or the grocer's, but measured…

A while ago I was in the train, and getting near Sligo. The last time I had been there something was troubling me, and I had longed for a…

Not only in Ireland is faery belief still extant. It was only the other day I heard of a Scottish farmer who believed that the lake in…

When there was a rumour of war with France a while ago, I met a poor Sligo woman, a soldier's widow, that I know, and I read her a sentence…

I have heard one Hearne, a witch-doctor, who is on the border of Clare and Galway, say that in "every household" of faery "there is a queen…

Those that see the people of faery most often, and so have the most of their wisdom, are often very poor, but often, too, they are thought…

The friend who heard about Maive and the hazel-stick went to the workhouse another day. She found the old people cold and wretched, "like…

Last night I went to a wide place on the Kiltartan road to listen to some Irish songs. While I waited for the singers an old man sang about…

Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn, Come clear of the nets of wrong and right; Laugh, heart, again in the gray twilight; Sigh, heart, again…