A Place of Unearthly Resort

Following the Benbulben thread as promised. In his book, The Celtic Twilight, W.B. Yeats wrote the following:

Drumcliff and Rosses were, are, and ever shall be, please Heaven! places of unearthly resort. I have lived near by them and in them, time after time, and have gathered thus many a crumb of faery lore. Drumcliff is a wide green valley, lying at the foot of Ben Bulben, the mountain in whose side the square white door swings open at nightfall to loose the faery riders on the world.

In fact there is a white square on the cliffs of Benbulben which, on a clear day, can be seen from our B&B located in Rosses Point. Legend says the faery host nightly ride, The Riding of the Sídhe, passes directly over our lodging. One woman who was with me in Ireland spent much of one day in the B&B garden contemplating this white square and decided a prudent move would be to put a note on the window in her room, which faced Benbulben, indicating that if they were looking for anyone to ride with them I was in room #3.

They didn’t fetch me that evening. But encounters in that landscape abound.