Sidhe and alchemy
Apr. 18th, 2022 08:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bloodygranuaileI was in the mood for some weird Irish folk stories so I picked up my copy of William Butler Yeats’ Mythologies, and it certainly did not disappoint in the “weird” department.
This book is actually several works jammed together into one volume, and they have precious little to do with each other. The first work, “The Celtic Twilight,” is a series of short anecdotes of odd stories Yeats has heard from various rustic persons around Ireland. “The Secret Rose” gets into tales that in form are a bit more recognizable as fairy-stories. “Stories of Red Hanrahan” is a series of short fairy-tales concerning the life of the titular poet, which is full of odd and magically inflected misfortunes. After that things get bizarre, with a batch of stories about alchemy and mysticism and religion, followed by some of Yeat’s philosophizing on the same subjects and also art.
Overall this was a dreamy, interesting read, if a bit hard to follow at times. I feel like I don’t have the background in weird mysticism stuff required to follow the stories at the end of it, although I could probably fix that. The fairy-tales were fun in a rustic, sometimes nonsensical way.
This book is actually several works jammed together into one volume, and they have precious little to do with each other. The first work, “The Celtic Twilight,” is a series of short anecdotes of odd stories Yeats has heard from various rustic persons around Ireland. “The Secret Rose” gets into tales that in form are a bit more recognizable as fairy-stories. “Stories of Red Hanrahan” is a series of short fairy-tales concerning the life of the titular poet, which is full of odd and magically inflected misfortunes. After that things get bizarre, with a batch of stories about alchemy and mysticism and religion, followed by some of Yeat’s philosophizing on the same subjects and also art.
Overall this was a dreamy, interesting read, if a bit hard to follow at times. I feel like I don’t have the background in weird mysticism stuff required to follow the stories at the end of it, although I could probably fix that. The fairy-tales were fun in a rustic, sometimes nonsensical way.