Search results for ""Author William Butler""

During the First World War approximately 210,000 Irish men and a much smaller, but significant, number of Irish women served in the British armed forces. All were volunteers and a very high proportion were from Catholic and Nationalist communities. This book is the first comprehensive analysis of Irish recruitment between 1914 and 1918 for the island of Ireland as a whole. It makes extensive use of previously neglected internal British army recruiting returns held at The National Archives, Kew, along with other valuable archival and newspaper sources.There has been a tendency to discount the importance of political factors in Irish recruitment, but this book demonstrates that recruitment campaigns organised under the auspices of the Irish National Volunteers and Ulster Volunteer Force were the earliest and some of the most effective campaigns run throughout the war. The British government conspicuously failed to create an effective recruiting organisation or to mobilise civic society in Ireland. While the military mobilisation which occurred between 1914 and 1918 was the largest in Irish history, British officials persistently characterised it as inadequate, threatening to introduce conscription in 1918.This book also reflects on the disparity of sacrifice between North-East Ulster and the rest of Ireland, urban and rural Ireland, and Ireland and Great Britain.

Read more less

Lady Augusta Gregory’s Irish Myths and Legends, or Gods and Fighting Men as it was first titled in 1904, is an essential collection of Irish myths, legends and folk tales gathered by Gregory from Irish oral story tellers at the close of the nineteenth century. These epic tales are divided into two parts: the first charts the coming of the mythic Tuatha De Danaan to Ireland, the lives of Manannan and Lugh, and the tragedy of the Children of Lir. The second part follows the exploits and trials of Finn Mac Cumhal, the Fianna, Oisin, and the love story of Diarmuid and Grania. This is a timeless collection of Irish myths and legends - whimsical, tragic, astounding and ever familiar - borne through the centuries, and an essential part of Ireland's literary heritage.

Read more less

This concentrated dose of the mystical wisdom of W.B. Yeats offers pleasure and insight to all who partake of it. “For nothing can be sole or whole / That has not been rent.”Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon carries on the influential tradition of Irish mystical poetry with the great words of William Butler Yeats. Yeats had a lifelong interest in Spiritualism; his work is rich in tarot and occult imagery. He asserted that a number of poems were “given” to him by supernatural powers. Yeats’s fierce ideas and images, coupled with his exquisite sense of rhyme, make for quotes that seekers will want to commit to memory. As Paul Muldoon explains, this poet is “supremely positioned to help us make sense of both the things of this world, the Otherworld, and the vast region between.” The Divining Poets Quotable Deck Series: Elegant, boxed sets of seventy-eight cards à la tarot decks, with oracular quotes from the world’s greatest visionary poets. Each card contains inspiring and provocative lines chosen for seekers to contemplate, memorize, or answer life questions. Complete with display stand and how-to instructions, this pocket-sized wisdom is perfect for the holiday season.

Read more less