The changeling would be an old fairy dressed up to look like that child… this fear could have been tied up with the idea of a very small child suffering from TB, or some other wasting disease and not thriving - not developing normally as a child. Yeats died in 1939.“There is an idea in Ireland… around children being abducted by the fairies and a changeling put in their place. His recurrent themes are the contrast of art and life, masks, cyclical theories of life (the symbol of the winding stairs), and the ideal of beauty and ceremony contrasting with the hubbub of modern life. His poetry, especially the volumes The Wild Swans at Coole (1919), Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), The Tower (1928), The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), and Last Poems and Plays (1940), made him one of the outstanding and most influential twentieth-century poets writing in English. Whereas he received the Prize chiefly for his dramatic works, his significance today rests on his lyric achievement.

Yeats is one of the few writers whose greatest works were written after the award of the Nobel Prize. He was appointed to the Irish Senate in 1922. Although a convinced patriot, Yeats deplored the hatred and the bigotry of the Nationalist movement, and his poetry is full of moving protests against it. His later plays were written for small audiences they experiment with masks, dance, and music, and were profoundly influenced by the Japanese Noh plays. The Countess Cathleen (1892), The Land of Heart's Desire (1894), Cathleen ni Houlihan (1902), The King's Threshold (1904), and Deirdre (1907) are among the best known.Īfter 1910, Yeats's dramatic art took a sharp turn toward a highly poetical, static, and esoteric style. His plays usually treat Irish legends they also reflect his fascination with mysticism and spiritualism. Together with Lady Gregory he founded the Irish Theatre, which was to become the Abbey Theatre, and served as its chief playwright until the movement was joined by John Synge. His first volume of verse appeared in 1887, but in his earlier period his dramatic production outweighed his poetry both in bulk and in import. The young Yeats was very much part of the fin de siècle in London at the same time he was active in societies that attempted an Irish literary revival.

Yeats was educated in London and in Dublin, but he spent his summers in the west of Ireland in the family's summer house at Connaught. His father was a lawyer and a well-known portrait painter. William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) was born in Dublin.

Irish Fairy and Folk Tales by Various