Coole Park

My group and I met our literature professor and went to Thor Ballylee Yeats Center and Coole Park. We saw the tower that W.B. Yeats lived in with his family and then we went to the park where his editor, Lady Gregory lived. Our professor read us poetry by Yeats inspired by the tower and the gorgeous park. It was incredible and it was evident why he was inspired by these places. Another thing that was really cool about this short excursion was what we learned about the Irish. They are incredibly proud of the success of people from Ireland and they appreciate art, music and literature a lot. We were about an hour late to meet our professor because we went to the wrong location initially but both the bus driver and our prof were casual about it and didn't mind at all. In our seminar class, Kathy talked about how at ease the Irish tend to be with time, it wasn't a big deal that we were late and everyone just dealt with it.

Yeats' Tower

Coole Park was beautiful, it was so green and there were different kinds of trees everywhere. Lady Gregory liked to plant trees and we saw a tree from China and we saw Redwood. There is also a tree that Lady Gregory had all of her house guests sign and there are many famous names on it! It was cool to stand where they had stood.

Lady Gregory's Tree

Signatures on Tree

Our professor also told us about the fairies of Ireland. People used to believe in fairies and they weren't nice ones like we see in Disney movies but instead they were mean and feared creatures. If there was a lump in the ground in a field, the Irish would just leave it there because they believed that fairies lived there and they didn't bother them. We came to a place in the woods with an odd formation of trees. There was a big tree in the middle and smaller ones all around it in a semi circle. Our professor said that the big tree could have been a fiddler playing music and there were people around him watching but then fairies came by and turned them all into trees!

We walked through the woods and came upon a lake that floods in the winter and fills up the whole area we were standing on. He told us there were usually swans there and he read us two more poems by Yeats inspired by where we were standing.

Lake

Professor Gerard