S1: Welcome to Yeats Country

Tour curator John Ward welcomes listeners about to embark on a range of sites that inspired a young Yeats to conjure up his Celtic Twilight. All of the well-known sites, plus a few non-Yeats treats are included culminating in a visit to Yeats's grave at Drumcliffe.

Please see the dedicated Yeats page https://www.racontour.com/yeats/ which has an overview of what the ful tour entails including pointers on the planning of the route over three days. To really get the most out of this guide though, you need to listen to it on our Yeats Country Guide playlist on Spotify where the stories are combined with songs: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7MFBdeOsoiScwyxo0zVty9?si=98c7331a3bad4451

Assuming you are doing so, after this audio piece, we have The Waterboy's epic version of a Celtic Twilight poem from the 1899 collection, The Wind amongst the Reeds: -

The Hosting Of The Sidhe

The host is riding from Knocknarea
And over the grave of Clooth-na-Bare;
Caoilte tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling Away, come away:
Empty your heart of its mortal dream.
The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round,
Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound,
Our breasts are heaving our eyes are agleam,
Our arms are waving our lips are apart;
And if any gaze on our rushing band,
We come between him and the deed of his hand,
We come between him and the hope of his heart.
The host is rushing 'twixt night and day,
And where is there hope or deed as fair?
Caoilte tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling Away, come away.

You'll have noticed Mick changed some of the lines around, but if someone is going to tamper with the master, let it be Mick! Besides, it was artistic licence. we love how he turned the opening lines into the chorus. It also made for the most perfect opening track as we ask you to come away with us on our epic tour of Yeats Country.

An Appointment with Mr Yeats, the Waterboys album of WB Yeats poems-become-songs first released in 2011, was recently remixed and remastered with six previously unreleased bonus tracks. It was released in late May 2022. Highlights of it feature throughout the playlist, including Steve Wickham's rendering of Come Gather Round Me, Parnellites which features straight after a visit to Connolly's where Parnell had been in Sligo.

Says Mike Scott: "I remixed the Yeats album during the 2020 lockdown, using all the skills I picked up while making the last several Waterboys records. Then it was mastered by my colleague Don Jackson. I'm thrilled with how it's come out. Not distractingly different, but fuller and richer, more powerful." No word of a lie, Mike!