The shadow of WB looms large in the lives of fellow-writers in his beloved Sligo... For Sunday Miscellany on RTÉ Radio 1, listen to Yeats Country by Brian Leyden above.
Where the Drumcliff River in north Sligo empties into the sea, a conveniently placed information board at the water's edge offers glossy depictions of the birds that favour these salty wetlands. I stand awhile, enjoying the tranquil sounds of their real-life counterparts in the estuary; waders and water-foul that plash, trill, dabble, and do what birds do to fill their day.
Across the channel, the shadowed slopes of the opposite headland stretch as far as the Lower Rosses. It was amongst the cottagers and fishing community of the Lower Rosses that the poet W.B Yeats gathered many of the folktales that went into one of his most significant early books, The Celtic Twilight – published one-hundred and thirty years ago in 1893.
Where the people of the Lower Rosses were concerned, said Yeats, this landscape was 'choke-full of ghosts', headless women, men in armour, shadow hares, fire tongued hounds, whistling seals…
Listen to more from Sunday Miscellany here.
