Yeats Pilgrimage, Day One - Coole Park and Thoor Ballylee

Coole Park

                                          The Wild Swans at Coole

THE TREES are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones	5
Are nine and fifty swans.
The nineteenth Autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount	10
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.
I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,	15
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.
Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold,	20
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.
But now they drift on the still water	25
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake’s edge or pool
Delight men’s eyes, when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?	30

                                           ~William Butler Yeats, 1919

Coole Park* was part of the Gregory Estate southeast of Galway City. Lady Augusta Gregory** was Yeats' good friend and part of the Irish literary renaissance. The house is gone, but other parts of the estate remain as part of a national park. We did not see the swans (although we saw swans almost everywhere else we went).

There is a lovely exhibit by the granddaughters who planted a catalpa tree in the garden in honor of their grandmother. They also said they remembered their grandmother pressing the seeds of wallflowers into cracks in the walls. After that every time I saw plants growing from the crevices in rock walls I thought of Lady Gregory.

Map of the estate and the lake

"These woods have been well loved, well tended by some who came before me, and my affection has been no less than theirs. The generations of trees have been my care, my comforters. Their companionship has often brought me peace."  Lady Gregory, 1931

The lake at Coole is a turlough,*** a kind of disappearing lake found almost exclusively in the west of Ireland. In the wet season the water is above ground, but in the dry season the level falls below through fissures in the limestone.

We headed out to the garden to look for the autograph tree.

The walls and walkways...

...and gates indicate the house itself must have been something else. Unfortunately the house fell into disrepair at a time when there was no money to save it.

The garden is an old one and the trees show it.

Ah, we see the copper beach in the distance.

Plaque marking the catalpa

YC and DH at the autograph tree

Some of the autographs are marked - W.B. Yeats and George Bernard Shaw and Teddy Roosevelt among so many others.

I was only able to pick out "GBS" for George Bernard Shaw. There are photos of a younger tree where the autographs were easier to read available. As it is, it is still impressive.

The copper beach's branches

Poppies

The graveyard for the dogs

Woods

Trails through the woods

I cannot imagine having this walk every day.

Wall near where the ground slopes off to the river.

Ferns growing from between tree roots.

DH walking down the road.

Blackberries

Another track through the woods

Sign for the nut wood

These covered the ground in the nut wood. I have no idea what kind of nuts these are.

Yet another path

Steps down towards the river.

Rock steps built into a wall.

Photos showing flooding in 2010 where the river rose well beyond its banks.

This was once a pump operated by a horse. The granddaughters of Lady Gregory reported that they found amazing things in their baths when the water was pumped straight from the river.

Rapids in the river.

Closeup of the rapids

Broken limestone along the river.

This natural formation hints at the turlough as well as the rock walls seen all over the countryside.

A view from the river towards the lake. I suspect we were on the lake bed and that we were too early in the season to see a lake there. Many people talked about how dry September had been "We have gone four weeks without rain and it is unusual for us to go four days without rain."

We never saw the swans, but saw evidence of them.

A downy feather from the edge of the river.

I am not sure if this is liatris or not, but it surely looked like it.

 

Horses in a field just beyond the river (for LD)

I spent a lot of time with these horses, trying to get a good photo.

And the white horse.

A gate post

Heading back to the grounds of the old house.

Another gate

The old dovecote

Another view of the dovecote. It was clear to us that some of the outbuildings of the estate remained even thought the house was torn down.

Thoor Ballylee - Tower at Ballylee****

I, the poet William Yeats,
With old mill boards and sea-green slates,
And smithy work from the Gort forge,
Restored this tower for my wife George.
And may these characters remain
When all is ruin once again.  ~Plaque on the wall at Thoor Ballylee

Yeats purchased an old Norman tower and more modern cottages and created a summer home. He loved it here and it is easy to see why. We walked around the closed building (damage from the river flooding the property has kept it closed for years) and heard voices within. I thought ghosts, but YC reminded me of the cars we saw in the carpark. She said she heard sweeping and that perhaps these people were talking about the work needed to reopen the tower. As we were leaving a woman walked out and I tried to get her talking - unsuccessfully. So we headed to Sligo.

YC and DH walking towards the tower.

Streamstown River

Plaque quoted above

Thatched cottages next to the tower

The tower

Another view of the tower

DH and YC sitting on the bridge over the Streamstown River

Flowers growing out of cracks in the walls. I wonder if Lady Gregory was here.

And blackberry blossoms

And blackberries

Leaving the tower

 

We leave Galway behind and head towards Sligo, Yeat's country

NOTES:
*http://www.coolepark.ie/
** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusta,_Lady_Gregory
***http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turlough_%28lake%29
****http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoor_Ballylee