The Irish Fairies in W. B. Yeats's Early Poems

The purpose of this paper is to offer a viewpoint of the early poems of William Butler Yeats, focusing on the Irish fairies. W. B. Yeats was enthralled with Celtic mythology and the world of fairy. Much of Yeats’s early poetry and writing alludes to the Celtic otherworld, idealistic world and it adds a wonderful depth and richness to much of his work. Included are “The Stolen Child,” “A Faey Song,” “The Hosting of the Sidhe,” and “The Wanderings of Oisin.” Yeats tried to provide the individual ideals or visions for the Irish by incorporating the elements of Celtic mythology and Irish folklore in his poetry. Yeats’s early poems by fairies depict the conflict between the real and the ideal world. Yeats attempts to transcend the troubles of the real world by leaving for the ideal world that is represented by an eternal fairyland beyond time and space. But because of his ideal world, which is dreamy and eternally beautiful as it may be, and is so remote from the real world, he cannot attain the harmony between the real and ideal world. He does not blindly fly to the fantasy world in order to escape reality, but he wants a balance between the two.