2013
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.
– from The Stolen Child, by W.B. Yeats
illiam Butler Yeats is my favourite poet. I feel a sort of magical kinship when I read his work, as if my imagination is something like a shadow or an echo of his. I’ve read that a lot of his writing was inspired by the countryside in Ireland where he grew up; specifically county Sligo. And so, on my second time visiting Ireland, after photographing a few wonderful families in Dublin, I decided to travel by train to the childhood stomping grounds of Mr. Yeats.
I stayed at a fantastic B&B in Sligo, and explored daily from there. I sat with a pint of cider at an old bar, getting lost in the beautiful music and stories at a late night trad session. I taxied in the early morning mist to a megalithic cemetery, walking alone in the fog around ancient stone circle tombs dating back to 5400 BC. I rented a bike and toured ‘Yeats Country’, cycling down to the Lake Isle of Innisfree, poking around an old castle, and ending up at a 16th century abandoned Franciscan Friary outside of Dromahair. A fortune teller and herbalist lived in a little garden cottage just outside of the dilapidated friary- everything I cycled by or strolled past seemed out of a little dream.
It was a really neat/surreal thing to be able to experience this all on my own, speaking to only a few people scattered throughout the day and really taking everything in. It was pretty calming and replenishing.
*Forgive all the iphone photos: my goal for this trip was to use my professional gear for my commissioned shoots, and to tuck it all away for the rest of the time and focus on really taking in everything around me. I don’t regret the decision one bit.
My biggest take-away from the sojourn out to Sligo was that apart from the crumbling castles, abbeys, walls, and picturesque cottages I passed, the countryside I was cycling by felt very much like home. It was a lightbulb moment that there really wasn’t any special difference between where W.B. Yeats grew up and where I did: a beautiful imagination can be cultivated anywhere in the world where there are trees, and wind, and water.
