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ISSN : 1226-4946(Print)
ISSN : 2288-5412(Online)
The Yeats Journal of Korea Vol.25 pp.89-118
DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.14354/yjk.2006.25.89

A Study on Irish Fairies in Yeats’s Fairy and Folk Tales in Ireland

Suh Hye Sook

Abstract

This study is on Irish Fairies in Fairy and Folk Tales in Ireland with aforeword by Kathleen Raine edited by Yeats for Korean readers. Nowadays manyKorean editions about celtic culture were published after 2000.
Fairy and Folk Tales in Ireland is the first American edition by Colin SmytheLimited in 1973. This volume contains Fairy and Folk Tales of Irish Peasantry,first published in 1888, and Irish Fairy Tales, first published in 1892. In thisvolume Yeats divided Irish Fairies into two great classes: the sociable and solitaryand described the characteristics of each fairies, and then collected 8 fairy poemsand 16 stories. Every poem and story in this volume is very interesting to me.Yeats is the best selector.
The sociable fairies who go about in troops, and quarrel, and make love, muchas men and women do, are divided into land fairies and water faires orMerrows(mermaid, merman). The solitary fairies who are nearly all gloomy andterrible in some way. However there are some among them who have light heartsand brave attire. There are the Lepracaun, the Cluricaun, the Far Darrig, the Pooka,the Dullahan, the Banshee. In Irish folk-lore Yeats had come across these fairiesmany others undiscovered.
He had thanks to Patrick Kennedy, Miss Maclintock, Lady Wilde, Mr. DouglasHyde. Mr. Allingham, Fergusson, and Miss O'Leary. He quoted from their works.His role is a vital linker in a chain of truly apostolic transmission of traditionallore. Evans-Wentz dedicated his first remarkable anthropological work, The FairyFaith in Celtic Countries(1911) to Yeats and G. Russell(A.E).
According to Kathleen Raine, Yeats's own interest in the "Matter of Faerie" wastwo fold. In part, certainly, it was a literary admiration for the highly formalized art of story-telling, and perhaps for the Irish use of the English language, thoseidiomatic turns of phase which arise from translation, by Gaelic-speakers, from onelanguage to the other.
Yeats who believed in Fairy-Faith to perpetuated in popular form mysterioustaught by the Druids see, like A. E and Evans-Wentz, in Tir-na-N'Og, the land ofthe Sidhe, Ploto's and Plotinus' "yonder" when our souls descend and where theyreturn. They also thought the Fairy-Faith belong to a doctrine of souls. In the Irishfairy poems and stories there are great beliefs in fairies. But Irish people rememberthe word, 'Be careful, and do not seek too much about fairies.'

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