the stories, and his little
introductions are charmingly written. It is delightful to come across a
collection of purely imaginative work, and Mr. Yeats has a very quick
instinct in finding out the best and the most beautiful things in Irish
folklore.

I am also glad to see that he has not confined himself entirely to prose,
but has included Allingham's lovely poem on _The Fairies_:

Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren't go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl's feather!

Down along the rocky shore
Some make their home,
They live on crispy pancakes
Of yellow tide-foam;
Some in the reeds
Of the black mountain lake,
With frogs for their watch-dogs
All night awake.

High on the hill-top
The old King sits;
He is now so old and gray
He's nigh lost his wits.
With a bridge of white mist
Columbkill he crosses,
On his stately journeys
From Slieveleague to Rosses;
Or going up with music,
On cold starry nights,
To sup with the Queen
Of the gay Northern Lights.

All lovers of fairy tales and folklore should get this little book. _The
Horned Women_, _The Priest's Soul_, {157} and _Teig O'Kane_, are really
marvellous in their way; and, indeed, there is hardly a single story that
is not worth reading and thinking over.

_Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry_. Edited and Selected by W.
B. Yeats. (Walter Scott.)

MR. W. B. YEATS
(_Woman's World_, March 1889.)

'_The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems_ is, I believe, the first
volume of poems that Mr. Yeats has published, and it is certainly full of
promise. It must be admitted that many of the poems are too fragmentary,
too incomplete. They read like stray scenes out of unfinished plays,
like things only half remembered, or, at best, but dimly seen. But the
architectonic power of construction, the power to build up and make
perfect a harmonious whole, is nearly always the latest, as it certainly
is the highest, development of the artistic temperament. It is somewhat
unfair to expect it in early work. One quality Mr. Yeats has in a marked
degree, a quality that is not common in the work of our minor poets, and
is therefore all the more welcome to us--I mean the romantic temper. He
is essential