D1 YC Ballysadare

Ballysadare Bridge
GPS Location: 54.209507, -8.509383
Narrators: Mary Murphy and Sean McMahon

Ballysadare village, 7 miles south of Sligo is where the Pollexfen Company had extensive milling interests. You should be on the bridge where the Ballysadare river is. Facing north, you are now best placed to recall one of Yeats's better known poems, 'Down by the Sally Gardens'. Down by the sally gardens my love and I did meet; She passed the sally gardens with little snow-white feet. She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs; But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.

The poet often stayed at nearby Avena House, just off the main street down from the bridge which remains a private dwelling. Salley rods were grown here, for basket making etc, and Yeats once heard a tinker woman sing the ballad he later reworded so delicately.

After Ballysadare, you'll be driving to Lough Gill and Dromahair by going under the N4 road onto the R290 traveling 3kms and turning right onto the R287. Get brought to brow showing spectacular Lough Gill via Google Maps: GPS Location: 54.250261, -8.45164

Another poem from Yeats's early work features the Crossways collection of 1889, published when he was 24. It references several nearby places.

The Ballad Of Father O'Hart

Good Father John O'Hart
In penal days rode out
To a Shoneen who had free lands
And his own snipe and trout.

In trust took he John's lands;
Sleiveens were all his race;
And he gave them as dowers to his daughters.
And they married beyond their place.

But Father John went up,
And Father John went down;
And he wore small holes in his Shoes,
And he wore large holes in his gown.

All loved him, only the shoneen,
Whom the devils have by the hair,
From the wives, and the cats, and the children,
To the birds in the white of the air.

The birds, for he opened their cages
As he went up and down;
And he said with a smile, 'Have peace now';
And he went his way with a frown.

But if when anyone died
Came keeners hoarser than rooks,
He bade them give over their keening;
For he was a man of books.

And these were the works of John,
When, weeping score by score,
People came into Colooney;
For he'd died at ninety-four.

There was no human keening;
The birds from Knocknarea
And the world round Knocknashee
Came keening in that day.

The young birds and old birds
Came flying, heavy and sad;
Keening in from Tiraragh,
Keening from Ballinafad;

Keening from Inishmurray.
Nor stayed for bite or sup;
This way were all reproved
Who dig old customs up.