![]() Glencar Waterfall is in Co Leitrim, just across the border from Sligo.įor the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.įor the world’s more full of weeping than he can understand. Local folklore suggested it was also a popular haunt for fairies. It was a popular seaside destination for the Yeats family. Sleuth Wood therefore literary means ‘sloping wood’. It comes from the Irish word, sliu, which means a slope or incline. Sleuth Wood is in Sligo where it is also known as Slish Wood. ![]() The Stolen Child is set in Yeats’ native Co Sligo and in nearby Leitrim. The Stolen child references actual places in Ireland Overview Wikisource has original text related to this article: Wikisource The poem was written in 1886 and is considered to be one of Yeats's more notable early poems. The boy is unhurt but the reader is still left with a sense of unease, loss and foreboding. ' The Stolen Child ' is an 1889 poem by William Butler Yeats, published in The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems. Having enticed the boy away in the final verse, the fairies contrast the familiar domestic sights he’s leaving such as the kettle boiling on the hob, with the “waters and the wild” that will be his new home.Īlthough the boy goes voluntarily, he is still stolen in the sense that he has been bewitched by the fairies’ chanting. It has a chanted, hypnotic rhythm which adds to the sense that the boy is being beguiled. This point is repeated in a four-line chorus at the end of each verse. They also play on the young boy’s fear, telling him that “the world’s fuller of weeping than you can understand”. The fairies also beguile him with stories of dancing and merriment, and of mischief such as playing tricks on slumbering trout. The fact that the cherries are stolen also conjures up the idea of “forbidden fruit” which adds to the sense of temptation. This may seem commonplace today but rich fruits would have been a luxury in 19th century Ireland. They begin by offering food with “vats full of berries and of reddest stolen cherries”. The poem is called The Stolen Child but the fairies beguile the boy into coming with them rather than actually steal him. It also appeared in Yeats’ first collection of Poems, Crossways, which was published in 1889. The Stolen Child was first published in Irish Monthly in 1896. Yeats loved such stories and they provided a rich vein of material for his early writing. The fairy addresses the child and points out. About one century before the famous Irish poet William Butler Yeats had wrote his famous poem The Stolen Child. There were many stories about fairies snatching children away and although no one took such tales too seriously, they could still create fear and unease in the subconscious of rural people well into the 20th century. Yeats was included in the volume of poems entitled Crossways published in 1889. The title is nothing new in Irish literature. Like much of his early work, it is based on the myths and legends he heard from local people while growing up in County Sligo. The Stolen Child is one W B Yeats’ most popular early poems.
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