Sligo, Yeats' Spiritual Home
Yeats and his siblings spent time with their grandparents in County Sligo as youths in the 1870s, and the region remained important to Yeats throughout the rest of his life. Sligo is where Yeats first developed interest in his Irish heritage, and its historical and natural features act as subjects for his poetry (c.f. "Under Ben Bulben," "The Old Age of Queen Maeve," etc.) Sligo, in other words, is where Yeats began to define for himself what it meant to be Irish, and, by extension, to define himself.
R.F. Foster, in the first volume of his biography W.B. Yeats: A Life, describes the summers J.B. and Susan Yeats' children spent at Sligo between 1870 and 1874. Amid complex parental relationships—to a father who would think none of his progeny were of any "extraordinary distinction" even in 1903, by which time they had all begun to achieve success in their separate pursuits, and to a distant and depressed mother—, "[w]hat stability there was in the children's life was rooted in Sligo" (Foster 18). The Yeatses moved frequently, but the recurrence of Sligo in the children's young lives appears to have given it a truer sense of "home"-ness to them than in the other locales in which they resided.
Foster's account of the Yeatses in Sligo shows how the county sowed the seeds for the Yeats children's later artistic pursuits (see, for example, Jack Yeats' painting Memory Harbour), and how it birthed W.B.'s broad set of obsessions, from myth to the occult to his first steps toward Irish nationalism. Foster notes that "Sligo gave the Yeats children confirmation of something their father continually adverted to: the superiority of the Irish ethos not only in scenery and climate but in manners, conversation, artistic sensibility and gentlemanly behaviour"(Foster 19). Sligo was where Yeats formed his Irish identity.
It was in Sligo that the supernatural seems to have entered Yeats' life as well, with tales of the unexplained being a pastime of both family members and servants: "[Yeats'] own early memories featured prescient visions, ghost stories and haunted houses out at Rosses Point: a cousin, Lucy Middleton, was credited with special powers and engaged in experiments with him… Everyone in Sligo, it seemed to them, talked of fairies, and so they did - to children. In some ways, [Yeats] required them to project this approach into later life as well" (Foster 21). Foster's final insight here is fascinating for what it tells us about the impact of memory on Yeats' art. As is also exemplified by his relentless pursuit of Maud Gonne's affections, Yeats was not a man for whom it was easy to let go. It seems that in some ways he never fully left Sligo.
Explore Yeats' Sligo
This zoomable map shows important events in Yeats' life that happened in Sligo. Hover over dots for more information about events and locations.
Explore Yeats' Sligo
This zoomable map shows important events in Yeats' life that happened in Sligo. Hover over dots for more information about events and locations. | Previous page on path | Place, page 1 of 5 | Next page on path |
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