During his absence, F. M.’s romance, Green Fire, was published. The title was taken from a line in ‘Cathal of the Woods,’ ‘O green fire of life, pulse of the world, O Love!’ And the deeper meaning of the expression ‘Green Life’—so familiar to all who knew ‘Fiona Macleod’—is suggested in a sentence at the close of the book: “Alan knew that strange nostalgia of the mind for impossible things. Then, wrought for a while from his vision of green life, and flamed by another green fire than that born of earth, he dreamed his dream.”
To me, the author wrote from New York:
“ ... I am indeed glad you like Green Fire so well. And you are right in your insight: Annaik is the real human magnet. Ynys is an idealised type, what I mean by Ideala or Esclarmoundo, but she did not take hold of me like Annaik. Alan, too, is a variation of the Ian type. But Annaik has for me a strange and deep attraction: and I am sure the abiding personal interest must be in her. You are the only one who seems to have understood and perceived this—certainly the only one who has noticed it. Some day I want to tell Annaik’s story in full....”
The author had read much Breton lore during his study of French Literature, and as his interest had for a time been centred on the land of the kindred Celt, he determined to make it the setting of a new Romance. He had never been there, so drew on his imagination for the depiction of the places he knew of by hearsay only. The result, when later he judged the book in cool criticism, he considered to be unsatisfactory as to structure and balance. He realised, that although the Fiona impetus produced the first chapter and the latter part, the plot and melodramatic character of the Breton story are due to W. S.; that the descriptions of nature are written by F. M. and W. S. in fusion, are in character akin to the descriptions in “The Children of Tomorrow,” written by W. S. in his transition stage. Consequently, when in 1905, he discussed with me what he wished preserved of his writings, he asked my promise that I would never republish the book in its entirety.
In order to preserve what he himself cared for, he rewrote the Highland portion of the book, named it “The Herdsman” and included it in The Dominion of Dreams. (In the Uniform Edition, it is placed, together with a series of detached Thought-Fragments from Green Fire, in The Divine Adventure, Vol. IV.) He never carried out his intention of writing Annaik’s story in full. Had he done so it would have been incorporated in a story, partly reminiscent of his early sojourn among the gipsies, and have been called The Gypsy Trail.
Some months later Mr. W. B. Yeats wrote to W. S.:
“I have read ‘Green Fire’ since I saw you. I do not think it is one of your well-built stories, and I am certain that the writing is constantly too self-consciously picturesque; but the atmosphere, the romance of much of it, of ‘The Herdsman’ part in particular haunts me ever since I laid it down.
‘Fiona Macleod’ has certainly discovered the romance of the remote Gaelic places as no one else has ever done. She has made the earth by so much the more beautiful.”
And Mr. George Russell (A. E.) wrote to F. M. from Dublin: