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Celtic Elements in Three Works by William Butler Yeats

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Celtic Elements in Three Works by William Butler Yeats DEBORAH TANNEN Folklore and Mythology Studies 2 (Spring 1978) Celtic Elements in Three Works by William Butler Yeats In Per Arnica Silentia Lunae, William Butler Yeats explains Billy Byrne lies, .as he says, " Ian great grandfather's battered his conception of "Anima Mundi"; he writes that he "came tomb' " to believe in a Great Memory passing on from generation to He stretched hiS bones and fell tn a dream generation." He finds that his study Hcreated a contact or mingling with Illinds who had followed a like study in some Of golden king and silver lady, other age, and that these minds still saw and thought and chose" and later continues, "Our animal spirits or vehicles Hands gripped in hands, toes close together} Hair spread on the wind they made. (II. 10-22) are but, as it were, a condensation of the vehicle of Anima Mundi." He refers to a similar concept which Henry More The couple in the dream is portrayed as jf sJeeping; indeed, calls "the soul of the world." Yeats then asserts, "Yet after a many of the happy escape-worlds in Yeats's poetry have a time the soul partly frees itself and becomes 'the shape­ sleepy ambiance (in ItThe Lake Isle of Innisfree," /lpeace changer' of the legends, and can cast, like the mediaeval comes dropping slow," 1.5), and Byzantium: is ruled by "a magician, what illusions it would."1 drowsy emperor" (IV,S). The "great-grandfather's battered The "shape-changer" of Irish legend is Manannan Mac Lir, tomb" not only provides the grave as the site for such a happy who has been called Uthe greatest magician of the Tuatha de dream; it also suggests that the happy world is connected Danann,"2 or faery people. Kuno Meyer describes several with the past, a concept which will be seen as central to tales of Manannan's shape-changing prowess and also gives Yeats's work. accounts which attribute the same powers to Manannan's It is consistent, then, that Cuchulain's (Ideath" in On Balle l s son, Mongan, in The Voyage of Bran Son of Febal to the Land Strand results from a battle in which lithe waves have of the Living (London, 1895). Manannan's wife, Fand, mastered him," and that in The Only Jealousy of Erner his "dreamed herself into that shape" of temptress in Yeats's death is characterized as a temptation to follow a lovely play, The Only Jealousy of Erner, and Cuchulain recognizes maiden. Peter Ure senses the attractiveness of death In the her as the hawk-woman of At the Hawk's Well: play: I know you now, for long ago But Fand <; charactenzatlon as a temptress cuts across her role dS , met you on a cloudy hilI "that which IS not life," and what she offers IS an Immortal, If Beside old thorn-trees and a well Inhuman, jove, where "nothing but beauty can remain" It (The Only Jealousy of Emer, II 239-241) mq~ht ha\p been better if the Ghost's condItion had been representpd more neutrally, as a draWing away Into some In The Only Jealousy of Erner, Yeats alters the legend he underworld of strengthfess shades (, uses as his source to attribute Cuchulain's swoon to his fight with the sea in On Baile's Strand. J Similarly, Yeats associates Of course, the attractive lure of death is the point of the play with the sea the Red Man who threatens Cuchulain in The and the source of its conflict, so it would hardly "have been Green Helmet; the Red Man appears out of the sea, "laughs better if the Ghost's condition had been represented more like the sea," (1.114) and in leaving ttsplashed himself into the neutrally." sea" (1.85). Moreover, the play is set against the physical The sea, then, may function in Yeats's work as a metaphor backdrop of U a misty moon-lit sea." This element is also for the vehicle to an otherworld which is associated With the without foundation in the legend.4 Yeats introduces the sea perfect worlds of sleep, dream, love, and the past. imagery in these plays to characterize death (in The Only Simultaneously, Yeats seems to associate the sea with his Jealousy of E,ner represente'd by Fand and in The Green conception of the force which unites men's minds: Helmet represented the Red Man) as connected with the by Our dally thought was certainly but the line of foam at thp ... hallow sea. edge of a vast luminous sea, Henry More's AnIma MundI. In Yeats's poetry, the sea is a vehicle for escape to a happy Wordsworth's "Immortal sea which brought us hIther," Jnd near otherworld, in the earliest poems (it 'What do you build with whose edge the children sport, and In that Sf>d therp W('f(' ')ome who sails for flight,' Cloak, the Boat, and the Shoes," as swam or salled, explorers who perhaps knew all Its sharps "liThe 1.6), ('Antma MundI," II. 70-76) well as in the later "Sailing to Byzantium." In this capacity, the sea is inextricably connected with dreams, which can The remainder of this paper will be devoted to a close analysis carry man off in the same way: {(The sea swept on and Cried of three works in which Yeats develops these themes her old cry still,/Rolling along in dreams from hili to hill" connected with his concept of the sea. These three, liThe (liThe Sad Shepherd," II. 10-11). It is also close to death, the Wanderings of Gisin," The Shadowy Waters, and IIThree only real ho.pe man has of traveling to another world: U I must Songs to The One Burden," are the only verse works in which be gone: there is a grave/Where daffodil and lily wave" ((/The Yeats specifically mentions the sea god by name. A detailed Song of the Happy Shepherd," II. 45-46). The last word of this study of these works will iJlustrate how this metaphor line has a double meaning, combining the grave's flowers functions in three different verse forms, epic poem, verse with the legendary Country-Under-Wave of which play and lyric. Manannan is lord. 5 In lines quoted previously, Yeats writes, " ...in that sea Furthermore, that otherworld is often inhabited by lovers, there were some who swam or sailed, explorers who perhaps so that it incorporates escape into all-encompassing Jove. knew alJ Its shores." Two such men are the heroes of "The These themes mer~e in "Under the Round Tower" where Wanderings of Ois;n" and The Shadowy Waters. In his 1906 30 revision of the 1900 verse play, Yeats removes the reference to which one would expect to Hnd in the happy land of the son of the sea. This omission lends some credence to the Tirnanog. As the pair enter the underwater world of the hypothesis that he finds it unnecessary to name the god, as his HCountry-under-wave," the scene is desolate and ugly. They force is otherwise felt. rise Ubetween/The seaweed-covered pillars" on a dark ttThe Wanderings of Cis;n/' published in 1889, tells of pathway,n to find a lovely Ulady with soft eyes like funeral Finn's son and his trip to Tirnanog ( a happy otherworld) with tapers." The imagery alerts the reader that all is not well here. Niamh, the immortal daughter of Aengus and Edain, who The lady ((with a wave-rusted chain" is utiedlTo two old resades there. After spending three centuries in three eagles," and Cisin is powerless to save her. Waves that cause different regions of that world, Disin returns to find an rust indicate that the sea is no longer benevolent and Ireland three centuries older than the one he left, and aworld beautiful. The path into the tower is covered with "green in which Christianity has gained dominance. The long slime" and shows ((prints of sea-born scales." This is the narrative poern is in the form of a dialogue between Oisin, atmosphere in which Niamh finds U a sword whose shine/No now old as he has left his everlasting youth in the land over centuries could dim" with the word in Ogham, uManannan," the sea, and Saint Patrick. The poem constitutes a poignant which he gives to Cisin. confrontation between the Fenian hero and the cleric. Manannan's sword shines in the darkness; it is the last Traditionally, the Irish 'otherworld is presided over by remnant of the god who apparently once inhabited the Malnannan Mac lir, an~ it is generally associated with what is tower. The god himself has· vanished. The narrative relates now called the Isle of Man. Although Yeats does portray an that after the sea god built the ((dark hall" he ucried to alllThe island which Disin reaches by sea, he prefers not to make mightier _masters of a mightier race," but, Manannan its lord. Alfred Nutt writes of UAngus, of the fairy ...at his cry there came no milk-pale face mound, within which is an enchanted palace,"7 and one can Under a crown of thorns and dark with blood, assume that this figure is the ruler Yeats assumed for Oisin's But only exultant faces. Tirnanog, since Niamh is the daughter of Aengus (Yeats's (The Wanderings of Oisin," Book II, 129-131) speUing). Aengus is particularly apt for this role in Yeats's poem These lines imply that Manannan expected Christ to answer because he is the god of love; it is for love of Niamh that Disin his call.
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