ABSTRACT
‘Have not all races had their first unity from a mythology that marries them to rock and hill?’ asks Yeats rhetorically. The poet’s consciousness of the organic relationship between mythology and nationality has been translated into three anthologies of Irish fairy and folk tales and legends: Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry (1888), Irish Fairy Tales (1892), and The Celtic Twilight (1893, 1902). The last sets the tone for the poetics of Irish Revivalism. Yeats, Lady Gregory, and Synge are amongst its most dedicated advocates. The idea of an ‘enchanted Ireland’, painted in crepuscular colours, is what fuels the poetic imagination and political agenda of the Revivalists. An Ireland deeply rooted in its mythology and mystical heritage, Yeats argues, will have the solidity of rock and hill that will stand against colonial policies of cultural erasure and assimilation. ‘Art and scholarship’, he carries on, ‘would give Ireland more than they received from her, for they would make love of the unseen more unshakable [… and] love of country more fruitful in the mind, more a part of daily life’. 1 This is not translating myth into nationality, but myth translating Yeats’s ideal of national identity.
