#yeats

[shisasan]

The winds that awakened the stars Are blowing through my blood. William Butler Yeats, Mad Quiet (1939)

[oidheadh-con-culainn]

i don't know why bluesky is suddenly overrun by yeats memes but here is a random selection of yeats memes for those who are not on bluesky to enjoy

(these were in a more logical / pleasing order and then tumblr ate half of them and i couldn't make them rearrange once i put them back, sorry)

[yeats-bot]

guys don’t freak out but the blood-dimmed tide? yeah it’s loosed.

[darknessdrops]

Dance there upon the shore; What need have you to care For wind or water’s roar? …

O you will take what ever’s offered And dream that all the world’s a friend, … But I am old and you are young, And I speak a barbarous tongue.

[theladyofwutheringheights]

[mask131]

Recently people have been speaking against the idea of "Fae" in fiction as "Melting pot of folkloric beings". For example I did reblog a long time ago thehumon's (thehmn) very interesting posts about why you can't use "fairy" when describing Scandinavian folkloric beings, and the way a "troll" can be VERY different depending on which country of Northern Europe you are in.

On one side... I actually don't mind and can enjoy the idea of putting a lot of folkloric beings around the world under the category of "fae" or "fairies", when it is done in fiction and in an effort to open up a fictional world without complexifying it. "Third People" Gargoyles style. I mean I grew up on Pierre Dubois' crazy encyclopedias, I VERY much enjoy Changeling the Lost, and I also will defend that cultures from time to time have a concepts very similar or eerily close to the "fairy" in its ancient term, close enough to allow for a "bridge" to be formed.

[What I mean is... Originally the Celtic Otherworld on which so much of the "fairies" came from was meant to be at the same time the real of fairies proper, the realm of gods and the realm of ghosts. One article put author put it in a very cool way (forgot her name though) - "The Otherworld is the place for those either immortal or already dead, which in the end accounts as the same thing." The idea of "yokai" in Japan in very similar as it is also a melting-pot of divine entities, ghosts, cursed items, nature spirits and just... weird things. And while "troll" indeed clearly isn't the same thing as "fairy" and the two cultures shouldn't be mixed, "troll" was used as both a name and an adjective to designate anything supernatural or otherwordly, just like "fairy". Herr Mannelig's ballad, where a man is courted by a female troll? It can be read as him being seduced by a witch or enchantress, because "troll-woman" was used sometimes to designate any type of otherwordly, magical woman. The same way dwarves and witches of old Norse myths and folklore were sometimes just put under the term" elf".]

Recognizing all this, I don't mind per se when in fiction sometimes decides to gather under one big supernatural international nation fairies and elves and trolls and yokai... That being said I also do defend and argue for people to learn their things, check their facts, get curious about origins, inform themselves about cultures and recognize how different and separate things are originally. It is something I got confronted with when I tried explaining that the French "fée" and the English "fairy" are not the same despite being very close (for one, French fée are mono-gendered. Male fées are very rare, so rare nobody agrees on what their name should be - as opposed to fairy which is a more gender-neutral term. In fact, one of the reasons "fairy" became so female-coded in the English language was because of the influence of the French fée, which is woman-exclusive.) I am also an enjoyer of stuff like "Les Contes du Korrigan" (The Korrigan's Tale) where a Breton korrigan has to leave France to visit cousins by the British Isles and there has a nice little cultural comparison with the leprechauns, brownies and ellylons.

Which leads me to my actual point... And the reason I wanted to make this post in the first place (gosh that's literaly me I wrote FOUR paragraphs before reaching what I wanted to post about). Because while everybody has been talking of whether or not "fae" or "fairy" or "faerie" or however you call it should be extended to other continents outside of Europe, and then about whether it should be used for all of Europe or just the British Isles... Nobody has been talking about how the generalization of "fae" has been also muddling and confusing the British Isles' own various folklore.

Because while everybody knows that "fae" is a mix of creatures and entities from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, people seem to just love to lump all these together and treat them as one sort of big whole, with maybe doublons and copies here and there, but just treated as alternate names or identities to the same entities. Which... is clearly robbing these distinct countries with their own, though interconnected, cultures of their own regional specificities. And I was reminded of this when I stumbled upon the (very funny by the way) text by William Butler Yeats called "Scots and Irish Fairies" (1889, The Scots Observer). And... It is so hilarious to see how Yeats clearly disliked Scottish fairies and fairy-tales and held them as SO different from the Irish ones. Go read the text when you have time because it is very informative, but to sum it up briefly...

Yeats explained how Scottish folks are just rigid, dry, stern theologians mixed with horror-story-writers, resulting in their fairies, goblins and spirits being cunning deceivers and malevolent entities and frightening beasts and angry ghosts causing people to constantly disappear or be killed in such a way you only find their liver (it's a recurring thing that Scottish creatures seems to leave just the liver behind. They seem to have something against livers.) Meanwhile in Irish fairies are much more pleasant, entertaining and merry-souls, all joyful and graceful ; and in every story you know that even the most horrible sights are just tricks or illusions that will leave the protagonist unharmed by the end. In Yeats' own conclusion, the Irish exchanged pleasantries with the Fair Folk whereas the Scottish treated them as the Dark Adversary.

And reading this old text is quite freshing and helping to put back things in perspective in an era where we are dominated by a "dark, alien, inhuman amoral fae" motif in fiction. And also by a vision of all British entities being lumped together without any influence of real life social, geographical or political conflicts implanted in them.

[mybruisedankleneedsakiss]

Midnight Mass (2021) dir. Mike Flanagan & The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats