How to Explore Yeats' Poetry Through Traditional Irish Music

If you have Internet access, it is fairly easy nowadays to look up some favorite William Butler Yeats poems and hear how they have been set to some beautiful Irish music, both old-fashioned and more contemporary. These performances can add even greater dimension to the original poem.

Things You'll Need

• Internet access

Instructions

How to Explore Yeats' Poetry Through Traditional Irish Music

1. Access various versions of "Down By the Salley Gardens," a lovely traditional ballad created to go with Yeats' yearning words. Maura O'Connell sings a heartrending version of this song, which ends with the line: "For I was young and foolish and now am full of tears."

2. Explore versions of "The Stolen Child," a song made popular about a decade ago by The Waterboys in a haunting rendition. An elderly man recites the poem throughout, and the band sings the chorus: "Come away, human child, to the waters and the wild." They finish with: "The world's more full of weeping than you will understand." Another soulful singer who does a lovely job with the song is Loreena McKennitt, a Canadian singer of Celtic music.

3. Sample "The Song of Wandering Aengus" by Yeats, as sung by Donovan (yes, of 1960s fame) as well as the more popular version by Christy Moore, the legendary Irish folk singer. This is another amazing myth-based poem of loss and longing made extraordinary in a new sense by its musical setting. Its images of the silver apples of the moon and the golden apples of the sun have endured.

4. Look for lesser-known, and sometimes less traditional-sounding songs based on Yeats poems, such as "Slouching Toward Bethlehem" by Joni Mitchell, and "Innisfree" by Judy Collins.