Conjuring Yeats

by Wendy Hawkin

If you are searching for signs of fairies, jet to Ireland, and follow the western trail of poet and mystic W.B. Yeats, as I did with my daughter this past August. Over a century ago, Yeats published his first edition of The Celtic Twilight, a collection of magical and mythological tales gleaned from the country people of County Sligo in western Ireland. Sligo or Sligeach, as it is said in Irish, means "places of the shells," owing to its proximity to the Atlantic Ocean. Yeats was of Anglo-Irish descent, raised and schooled in London like many of his contemporaries, but he su...