Tillyra Castle,
Co. Galway.
My dear Sharp,
Many thanks for your letter. You must have written it the very morning I was writing to Miss Macleod. I have just returned from the Arran Islands where I had gone on a fishing boat, and where I go again at the end of this week. I am studying on the islands for the opening chapter of a story I am about to set out upon. I met two days ago an old man who hears the fairies he says every night and complains much that their singing keeps him awake. He showed me a flute which he had got thinking that if he played it they might be pleased and so cease teasing him. I have met much curious lore here and in Arran.
I have had some singular experiences myself. I invoked one night the spirits of the moon and saw between sleep and waking a beautiful woman firing an arrow among the stars. That night she appeared to Symons who is staying here, and so impressed him that he wrote a poem on her the only one he ever wrote to a dream, calling her the fountain of all song or some such phrase. She was the symbolic Diana. I invoked a different spirit another night and it appeared in dreams to an old French Count, who was staying here, and was like Symons ignorant of my invocations. He locked his door to try to keep it out. Please give my greetings to Miss Macleod.
Yours Sincerely,
W. B. Yeats.
F. M. wrote in acknowledgment of a long critical letter from Mr. Yeats, to whom “she” had sent The Washer of the Ford:
Tarbert on Loch Fyne.
Dear Mr. Yeats,