Irish Fairy and Folk Tales Quotes

“On November Eve they are at their gloomiest, for according to the old Gaelic reckoning, this is the first night of winter. This night they dance with the ghosts, and the pooka is abroad, and witches make their spells, and girls set a table with food in the name of the devil, that the fetch of their future lover may come through the window and eat of the food. After November Eve the blackberries are no longer wholesome, for the pooka has spoiled them.”
― W.B. Yeats, Irish Fairy and Folk Tales

“Come away, O, human child!
To the woods and waters wild,
With a fairy hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.”
― W.B. Yeats, Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry

“it's a long lane that has no turning.”
― W.B. Yeats, Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry

“Their chief occupations are feasting, fighting, and making love, and playing the most beautiful music. They have only one industrious person amongst them, the lepra-caun—the shoemaker.”
― W.B. Yeats, Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry

“every one is a visionary, if you scratch him deep enough. But the Celt is a visionary without scratching.”
― W.B. Yeats, Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry

“With us nothing has time to gather meaning, and too many things are occurring for even a big heart to hold.”
― W.B. Yeats, Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry

“I don't think the moral is good; and if any of you thuckeens go about imitating Anty in her laziness, you'll find it won't thrive with you as it did with her. She was beautiful beyond compare, which none of you are, and she had three powerful fairies to help her besides.”
― W.B. Yeats, Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry

“On Midsummer Eve, when the bonfires are lighted on every hill in honour of St. John, the fairies are at their gayest, and sometime steal away beautiful mortals to be their brides.”
― W.B. Yeats, Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry

“Red is the color of magic in every country, and has been so from the very earliest times. The caps of fairies and magicians are well-nigh always red.”
― W.B. Yeats, Irish Fairy and Folk Tales

“The troop dismounted near a window, and Jamie saw a beautiful face, on a pillow in a splendid bed. He saw the young lady lifted and carried away, while the stick which was dropped in her place on the bed took her exact form.”
― W.B. Yeats, Irish Fairy and Folk Tales

“Now,” said he to himself, “I have no more to do; the door is shut, and I can’t open it.” Before the words were rightly shaped in his own mind, a voice in his ear said to him, “Search for the key on the top of the door, or on the wall.” He started. “Who is that speaking to me?” he cried, turning round; but he saw no one. The voice said in his ear again, “Search for the key on the top of the door, or on the wall.” “What’s that?” said he, and the sweat running from his forehead; “who spoke to me?” “It’s I, the corpse, that spoke to you!” said the voice. “Can you talk?” said Teig. “Now and again,” said the corpse.”
― W.B. Yeats, Irish Fairy and Folk Tales

“I have to thank Messrs. Macmillan, and the editors of Belgravia, All the Year Round, and Monthly Packet, for leave to quote from Patrick Kennedy’s Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts, and Miss Maclintock’s articles respectively; Lady Wilde, for leave to give what I would from her Ancient Legends of Ireland (Ward & Downey); and Mr. Douglas Hyde, for his three unpublished stories”
― W.B. Yeats, Irish Fairy and Folk Tales

“Now I quite acknowledge that these allegories are very nice, but he is not to be envied who has to invent them; much labor and ingenuity will be required of him; and when he has once begun, he must go on and rehabilitate centaurs and chimeras dire. Gorgons and winged steeds flow in apace and numberless other inconceivable and portentous monsters. And if he is skeptical about them, and would fain reduce them one after another to the rules of probability, this sort of crude philosophy will take up all his time. Now, I have certainly not time for such inquiries. Shall I tell you why? I must first know myself, as the Delphian inscription says; to be curious about that which is not my business, while I am still in ignorance of my own self, would be ridiculous. And, therefore, I say farewell to all this; the common opinion is enough for me. For, as I was saying, I want to know not about this, but about myself. Am I, indeed, a wonder more complicated and swollen with passion than the serpent Typho, or a creature of gentler and simpler sort, to whom nature has given a diviner and lowlier destiny?”
― W.B. Yeats, Irish Fairy and Folk Tales

“When I was growing up, my mother taught me the language of birds; and when I got married, I used to be listening to their conversation; and I would be laughing; and my wife would be asking what was the reason of my laughing, but I did not like to tell her”
― W.B. Yeats, Irish Fairy and Folk Tales

“these allegories are very nice, but he is not to be envied who has to invent them; much labour and ingenuity will be required of him; and when he has once begun, he must go on and rehabilitate centaurs and chimeras dire. Gorgons and winged steeds flow in apace, and numberless other inconceivable and portentous monsters. And if he is sceptical about them, and would fain reduce them one after another to the rules of probability, this sort of crude philosophy will take up all his time. Now, I have certainly not time for such inquiries.”
― W.B. Yeats, Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry

“Round these men stories tended to group themselves, sometimes deserting more ancient heroes for the purpose. Round poets have they gathered especially, for poetry in Ireland has always been mysteriously connected with magic.”
― W.B. Yeats, Irish Fairy and Folk Tales

“That ancient chronicler Giraldus taunted the Archbishop of Cashel because no one in Ireland had received the crown of martyrdom. "Our people may be barbarous," the prelate answered, "but they have never lifted their hands against God's saints; but now that a people have come amongst us who know how to make them (it was just after the English invasion), we shall have martyrs plentifully.”
― W.B. Yeats, Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry

“Each county has usually some family, or personage, supposed to have been favoured or plagued, especially by the phantoms, as the Hackets of Castle Hacket, Galway, who had for their ancestor a fairy, or John-o'-Daly of Lisadell, Sligo, who wrote "Eilleen Aroon,”
― W.B. Yeats, Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry

“The Cluricaun, (Clobhair-ceann, in O’Kearney) makes himself drunk in gentlemen’s cellars. Some suppose he is merely the Lepracaun on a spree. He is almost unknown in Connaught and the north.”
― W.B. Yeats, Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry

“The Merrow, of if you write it in the Irish, Moruadh or Murúghach, from muir, sea, and oigh, a maid, is not uncommon, they say, on the wilder coasts. The fishermen do not like to see them, for it always means coming gales.”
― W.B. Yeats, Irish Fairy and Folk Tales

“Go out o’ this, you thieves, you—go out o’ this now, an’ let me alone. Nickey, is this any time to be playing the pipes, and me wants to sleep? Go off, now—troth if yez do, you’ll see what I’ll give yez tomorrow. Sure I’ll be makin’ new dressin’s; and if yez behave decently, maybe I’ll lave yez the scrapin’ o’ the pot. There now. Och! poor things, they’re dacent crathurs. Sure they’re all gone, barrin’ poor Red-cap, that doesn’t like to lave me.”
― W.B. Yeats, Irish Fairy and Folk Tales

“Keen”
― W.B. Yeats, Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry

“pensive.”
― W.B. Yeats, Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry

“crabtree”
― W.B. Yeats, Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry

“dapper”
― W.B. Yeats, Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry

“monomaniac”
― W.B. Yeats, Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry

“pooka”
― W.B. Yeats, Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry

“The Irish word for fairy is sheehogue [sidheóg], a diminutive of “shee” in banshee. Fairies are deenee shee [daoine sidhe] (fairy people).”
― W.B. Yeats, Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry

“allegories”
― W.B. Yeats, Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry

“Socrates. The wise are doubtful, and I should not be singular if, like them, I also doubted.”
― W.B. Yeats, Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry