The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats. Volume 5 of 8. The Celtic Twilight and Stories of Red Hanrahan. Yeats William Butler
wrote this sentence long ago. This sadness now seems to me a part of all peoples who preserve the moods of the ancient peoples of the world. I am not so pre-occupied with the mystery of Race as I used to be, but leave this sentence and other sentences like it unchanged. We once believed them, and have, it may be, not grown wiser.
2
I wonder why she had white borders to her cap. The old Mayo woman, who has told me so many tales, has told me that her brother-in-law saw ‘a woman with white borders to her cap going round the stacks in a field, and soon after he got a hurt, and he died in six months.’
3
A ‘pattern,’ or ‘patron,’ is a festival in honour of a saint.
4
I know better now. We have the dark powers much more than I thought, but not as much as the Scottish, and yet I think the imagination of the people does dwell chiefly upon the fantastic and capricious.
5
The religious society she had belonged to.