William Butler Yeats Trivia Quiz

Answer: Dublin

One of the foremost figures in Irish literature during the late 19th and early 20th century, William Butler Yeats was born in Dublin on 13 June 1865. He came from an Anglo-Irish family, and developed a fascination with Irish legends as a youth. They featured prominently in his 19th century work, and remain as background to his more realistic later work.

In 1889 Yeats published his first collection of poems, 'The Wanderings of Oisín and Other Poems'. The title poem is an epic narrative of a conversation between Oisín and Saint Patrick, in which the aging Fenian warrior and Ireland's greatest poet, reflects on his life, and the struggle to maintain the ancient faith in the face of Christianity.

Answer: The Stolen Child

This is one of the 'Other Poems' in the collection published in 1889 which established Yeats as a poet of import. While it is not one of his greatest poems, it illustrates his interest in Irish legend, recounting how the faeries tempt a child to leave home and reside with them. He published two collections of Irish legend around this time, 'Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry' in 1888 and 'Fairy Folk Tales of Ireland' in 1892.

The poem has been set to music a number of times, starting with a four-part vocal arrangement by the English composer Cyril Rootham in 1911, and later as arrangements for a large number of other choral groups as well as solo performers.

The refrain has found its way into a number of other works, including the Steven Spielberg movie 'A.I. Artificial Intelligence', and an episode of the television series 'Torchwood'.

"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."

Answer: Cuchulain

Cú Chulainn was a legendary Irish hero and demigod who featured in Manx and Scottish, as well as Irish, mythology. According to the Ulster Cycle myths, he gained his nickname, the Hound of Ulster, as a child when he killed the watch dog of Chulainn, and offered to guard the smith's house until a replacement dog could be bred and trained. The tales of his prowess in battle are many, and do not always agree with each other. He became a symbol of the Irish Nationalist movement.

Yeats wrote prefaces for 'Cuchulain of Muirthemne', a 1904 compilation of Irish mythology produced by his friend Lady Gregory. Cuchulain also appeared in a number of Yeats' other writings, including the plays 'On Baile's Strand' (1904), 'The Green Helmet' (1910), 'At the Hawk's Well' (1917), 'The Only Jealousy of Emer' (1919) and 'The Death of Cuchulain' (1939), and the poems 'Cuchulain's Fight with the Sea' (1892) and 'Cuchulain Comforted' (1939).

Answer: Abbey

In 1897, Yeats, Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn produced a manifesto for the establishment of an Irish Literary Theatre, and a group dedicated to that task was set up with the assistance of George Moore in 1899. They produced a number of plays, but collapsed in 1901 due to lack of funding. Another group, the Irish National Theatre Society, was organised, and they managed to acquire a property which opened as The Abbey Theatre in December of 1904.

Yeats's one-act plays 'On Baile's Strand' and 'Cathleen ni Houlihan' were featured on the opening night of the Abbey, and he remained involved with the theatre until his death, both as a contributing playwright and as a member of the board.

Answer: The Lake Isle of Innisfree

In 'Autobiographies' (a collection of six autobiographical pieces), Yeats describes a moment of recalling his childhood memories of time spent near the uninhabited island in Sligo, and the way this combined with his longtime interest in the Transcendentalist writing of Thoreau, especially 'Walden'. Once you have been told that, it is obvious! This poem marks an attempt to write in a uniquely Irish, as opposed to English, mode; despite the poet's feeling that he had outgrown it as an adult, it remained one of the poems for which he was best known.

"I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core."

Answer: True

Despite his strongly nationalistic feelings, Yeats had not been sympathetic to the Irish Republican movement responsible for the uprising of 24 April 1916, as he did not consider violence to be an appropriate strategy. The events, including the brutal British punishment of the leaders of the failed rebellion, made him reconsider his attitude, and 'Easter 1916' (written between May and September of that year, but not officially published until 1920) reflects his conflicted thoughts.

In 1922 Yeats was appointed as a Senator of the Irish Free State; he served in that position until his retirement due to ill health in 1928.

Answer: An Irish Airman Foresees His Death

The other three poems appeared in both collections, which actually have very few other poems in common, aside from the one in the title! The first collection was dedicated to Major Robert Gregory, the son of his friend Lady Gregory, whose home at Coole Park he was visiting when many of the poems were written. Major Gregory had died during World War I, in a friendly fire incident.

The second collection included Yeats' own reflection on facing death, but with the added complexity of writing from the perspective of an Irish, not an English, airman. It therefore explores the motivations of one fighting for a cause that is not their own, and is critical not only of the war itself, but also of British rule over Ireland (which was still in place).

"I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death."

Answer: The Second Coming

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."

So reads the first verse of this 1920 poem in which Yeats uses Christian apocalyptic imagery to describe the state of Europe immediately following World War I, and the conditions in Ireland as the Irish War of Independence was underway. Then there was the 1918-1919 flu pandemic: his pregnant wife was recovering from a severe case that nearly killed her when he wrote the poem. Things were not good, and this poem has continued to strike a chord through the years. It has been widely referenced in poems, novels, essays, films, etc. - sometimes as a direct quote, sometimes as a reference that relies on familiarity with the original to see significance in a twist. An example of the latter is the title of Jonathan Alter's analysis of the 2012 US Presidential election, 'The Center Holds: Obama and His Enemies'.

Answer: False

Hardly! Not only was there never any such cruise (the romantic relationship between Yeats and Gonne was essentially one of obsession on his part, with a brief liaison after a 20-year pursuit leading nowhere), but this poem is a reflection of an old man about the physical and spiritual journey of life. The universality of its theme has led to it being used (or at least referenced) many times. Not least of these was Yeats himself, whose 1928 poem 'Byzantium' was an effort to clarify and expand on the ideas expressed in the original.

Seán Ó Faoláin titled his short story about veterans of the Irish War of Independence 'No Country for Old Men', a direct quote from the first line of Yeats' poem. His daughter, Julia O'Faolain, used 'No Country for Young Men' as the title of a novel in 1980. The same line was used by Cormac McCarthy for his 2005 novel 'No Country for Old Men', which was also the title of the 2007 film adaptation.

Robert Silverberg's 1985 novella 'Sailing to Byzantium', which deals with many of the same issues as the poem, includes several quotations from it.

Answer: Under Ben Bulben

This is one of the last poems written by Yeats, and was not published until after his death six months after he wrote the first draft. Yeats is buried in the churchyard of St Columba's Church in Drumcliff, near the foot of the large rock formation known as Ben Bulben. Ben Bulben has featured in Irish legends, and was the site of a battle of the Irish Civil War. Yeats had told his family that he wished to be initially buried where he died (in France), to avoid publicity, but then to have a final resting place in Sligo. This was done in 1948; the epitaph on his tombstone reads:
"Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman pass by!"

This is yet another piece of Yeats' work which has found a home with other writers. Larry McMurtry's first novel, 'Horseman, Pass By', was adapted into the 1963 movie 'Hud', starring Paul Newman. The horseman is Hud's stepfather Homer, whose funeral is at the end of the book.