W. B. Yeats

W. B. Yeats

With his father a successful painter and his mother's family prosperous Sligo merchants, W. B. Yeats was born in Dublin in 1865. Ireland's heroic past and folklore inspired his earlier poetry and plays. In Yeats's play 'The Countess Cathleen' (1899), JJ was sufficiently moved by the chanting of "˜Who goes with Fergus?' to set the verse to music. JJ was famously arrogant and rude when he first met Yeats in 1902. As a poet of world importance, Yeats received the Nobel Prize in 1923. He advocated tolerance in the nationalistic Irish state and, in later life, continued to write fine poetry, essays and plays. Tim O'Neill