On Saturday 30th April Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society is hosting a fundraiser in aid of the Ukrainian refugee crisis. It is a fitting venue as much of Yeats’s work, including “Meditations in Time of Civil War”, conceived and written at Thoor Ballylee, considered the nature of war and violence, and led to him receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature.
The event on April 30th 2022 will consist of a afternoon tea served at the cottage in the 14th century tower between 3pm and 4.30pm.
You will be spoiled with a selection of delicious treats kindly provided by local restaurateurs and businesses.
A photograph from the event: all proceeds go to Ukrainian refugee organizations. For more details visit here. And below Nicolay Homenko shows off his artistic skills – this piece was created during the concert!
Poetry Day Ireland
Poetry Day Ireland takes place today, Thursday 28 April 2022. The theme is ‘Written in the Stars’.
Poetry Ireland ask us all to share a poem, read a poem, speak a poem, participate in a Poetry Day Ireland event or programme your own event on the day. Everyone is invited to join in and celebrate, just remember to tag them on #PoetryDayIrl.
Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society joins in with this weird millennial poem from The Wind Among the Reeds (1899). It refers to a mythical battle of ancient Ireland whose terrifying violence seems to come again, whereupon the speaker humbly submits in peace before the fates written in the stars, dictated by the demiurge, or prime mover of the heavens.
‘The Valley of the Black Pig’
The dews drop slowly and dreams gather: unknown spears
Suddenly hurtle before my dream-awakened eyes,
And then the clash of fallen horsemen and the cries
Of unknown perishing armies beat about my ears.
We who still labour by the cromlech on the shore,
The grey cairn on the hill, when day sinks drowned in dew,
Being weary of the world’s empires, bow down to you
Master of the still stars and of the flaming door.
WB Yeats, from The Wind Among the Reeds (1899)
‘AE’ (George Russell), ‘Lordly Ones Appearing to a Turf Cutter’
Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society is delighted to announce our Easter reopening, and welcoming back our visitors – after a two year closure – from 11am this Easter Saturday 16th April 2022! Comhaltas Gaillimh Theas will provide entertainment between 12 noon and 1pm.
Each weekend in April we’ll be open 11-4pm. Further opening hours will be announced for the summer.
Especially thanks to our many helpers, contractors, and volunteers (to help or join us see below) we are primed and ready, and excited to welcome you back!
Volunteers readying the tower for opening!
This Easter Saturday and beyond into spring and summer, come along and learn about the life and work of WB Yeats, the poems he wrote at Thoor Ballylee, and he and his family’s deep connections to the area and the west of Ireland. The cultural revolution his family began would involve the whole island in arts and crafts, so it is fitting that the restoration of the the restoration of the tower with local materials is continued today in the Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society’s efforts with local craftworkers and landscape gardeners on the gardens, the Studio at Thoor Ballylee, and the Mill.
With the help of the Spot-lit programme for literary tourism, with camera and editing by Morgan Creative and Seanchas Productions, and featuring local musicians and contributors, these short films are voiced by luminaries like Marie Mullen from Druid Theatre and some of our very own members. They highlight places in County Galway important to Yeats and which feature in some of his finest poems, from ‘The Tower’ to (as here) ‘Meditations in Time of Civil War’, as a ghost returns to old haunts.
Come and help!
Thoor Ballylee historic fourteenth Century tower house, once home to Nobel Prize winning poet WB Yeats and his family, is managed and run by an amazing group of volunteers. We are currently adding to our volunteer pool so if you have a love of literature or history, enjoy interacting with people and have four hours a week to spare, please contact Thoor Ballylee at +353 85 862 0935, email thoorballylee@gmail.com, or contact us above.
We are a voluntary group with no permanent external funding. We’d love for you to help us keep this unique heritage site going for all of us today, and for future generations. To join us or donate any amount large or small see the donate page above.
In readiness for our grand reopening on Easter Saturday, our team of volunteers took advantage of the spring sunshine and tidied and pruned and carried and cleaned and gardened and wheeled and worked and generally made the C14th Norman tower and its surrounds ready for visitors.
Committee members Lelia Doolan and Rena McAllen and other volunteers young and old muck in with the gardening and landscaping at Ballylee.
Our dedicated team of volunteers (and dog) take a break.
After over two years of waiting Thoor Ballylee will reopen for visitors Saturday 16 April 2022. The countdown continues!
Coole Park
Speaking of gardening, when you visit Thoor Ballylee, why not stop at Lady Gregory’s great gardens and woods at Coole Park? The latest of our short films highlighting Galway places features Yeats’s poem ‘Coole and Ballylee 1931’ and celebrates the place, the people, and all the inspiration to which it gave birth. Voiced by Marie Mullen from Druid Theatre.
With the help of the Spot-lit programme for literary tourism, with camera and editing by Morgan Creative and Seanchas Productions, and featuring local musicians and contributors, Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society is presenting the online premieres of new films about Yeats and Galway. For more see Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society youtube channel
Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society is delighted to announce our Easter reopening, and welcoming back our visitors – after a two year closure – on Easter Saturday 16th April 2022!
It’s been a hard road, but after two years socially distanced or online, and with plenty of ongoing work to the thatch, the mill, and latterly our spring clean-up – and especially thanks to our many helpers, contractors, and volunteers (to help or join us see below) we are primed and ready, and excited to welcome you back!
The new thatch at Thoor Ballylee
Kiltartan Gregory Museum
Meanwhile we highlight other gems of the area for our visitors, and invite you to visit the award-winning Kiltartan Gregory Museum. The following film showcases this hidden gem, based in the old schoolhouse at Kiltartan Cross (mentioned in Yeats’s poem ‘The Irish Airman Foresees His Death’), devoted to Lady Gregory and Yeats and featuring all kinds of fascinating art, books, letters, publications, and memorabilia concerning the area and its literary heritage.
In the run up to our spring reopening, Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society is presenting the online premieres of new films about Yeats and Galway. Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society youtube channel
With the help of the Spot-lit programme for literary tourism, with camera and editing by Morgan Creative and Seanchas Productions, and featuring local musicians and contributors, these short films are voiced by luminaries like Marie Mullen from Druid Theatre and some of our very own members. They highlight places in County Galway important to Yeats and which feature in some of his finest poems, from ‘The Tower’ to (as here) ‘Meditations in Time of Civil War’, as a ghost returns to old haunts.
Come and help!
Thoor Ballylee historic fourteenth Century tower house, once home to Nobel Prize winning poet WB Yeats and his family, is managed and run by an amazing group of volunteers. We are currently adding to our volunteer pool so if you have a love of literature or history, enjoy interacting with people and have four hours a week to spare, please contact Thoor Ballylee at +353 85 862 0935, email thoorballylee@gmail.com, or contact us above.
We are a voluntary group with no permanent external funding. We’d love for you to help us keep this unique heritage site going for all of us today, and for future generations. To join us or donate any amount large or small see the donate page above.
In the run up to our spring reopening, Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society is presenting the online premiere of new films about Yeats and Galway. These short films highlight places in County Galway important to Yeats and which feature in some of his finest poems, from ‘The Tower’ to ‘Coole and Ballylee 1931’.
With the help of the Spot-lit programme for literary tourism, drawing on both their expertise and funding, and the work of some crack producers and content creators, Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society produced this film series highlighting the importance of the tower and the Society’s work in “Spreading the News” about the literary connections of WB Yeats and beyond. These films are designed to attract audiences near and far to the delights of Galway, and help bring visitors to Thoor Ballylee and the many other important sites in our region.
Returning to Thoor Ballylee
Returning to Thoor Ballylee features a thin figure in cloak and hat – the ghost of an old poet perhaps? – returning to a place where he was once so fulfilled.
This reintroduction to the landscape and sounds of Thoor Ballylee features Yeats’s poems ‘To Be Carved on a Stone at Thoor Ballylee’ and ‘Meditations in Time of Civil War’. It is voiced by Marion Cox and Ronnie O’Gorman with camera by Morgan Creative.
The film inaugurates Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society’s own YouTube channel, on which more content is expected over the next weeks and months. The film is part of an ongoing series promoting Thoor Ballylee, Kiltartan, Coole Park, Doorus House and The Flaggy Shore.
The film invites you, too, to return to Thoor Ballylee this spring, in the summer, sometime in the future, or just in imagination. Long live the returning spirit of WB Yeats and his family!
In this new year work is continuing apace at Thoor Ballylee on all kinds of projects poetical, digital, and practical..! Despite the inevitable challenges of these pandemic-hit times, it’s been an exciting few months on and off line, and we face the new year with new confidence as we look forward to welcoming back visitors in the spring.
Thoor Ballylee App
Yeats’s Norman tower has moved into the digital world with the help of local expert Stephen Forde who designed an app for Thoor Ballyee, so even when the doors are closed in winter time or during summer evenings guests can engage with the space. As part of the initiative QR codes have been placed on waterproof panels in suitable locations throughout the site providing an immersive experience for visitors mixing history, poetry and song.
Rena McAllen, new chair Anna O’Donnell, and Stephen Forde at the launch of Thoor App
As our own Rena McAllen explains:
We have put in place 10 ‘hotspots’ marked by QR code panels throughout the site at Thoor Ballylee, containing stories, pictures and audio files of Ger Conneely reading Yeats’s poetry. This technology, which is free for anyone to use will enable visitors using our interpretive app technology to learn more about the Nobel Poet Laureate and his time at Thoor Ballylee. All visitors need is the Great Visitor Experiences App available on App Store or Play Store.
New films about Galway and the Burren
With the help of the Spot-lit programme for literary tourism, drawing on both their expertise and funding, and the work of some crack producers and content creators, Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society helped produce a series of short films highlighting the importance of the tower and the Society’s work in “Spreading the News” about the literary connections of WB Yeats and beyond. Part of an ongoing series promoting Thoor Ballylee, Kiltartan, Coole Park, Doorus House and The Flaggy Shore – these films will hopefully entrance audiences near and far and help bring visitors to Thoor Ballylee and the many other important sites in our region. Look out for more soon.
Award-winning Thoor Ballylee
Thanks to the work of our helpers and wonderful participants, Thoor Ballylee’s Wild Child event for Heritage Week was awarded runner-up in our category in the National Heritage Week Awards 2021!
Site improvements
An attractive new sign, erected by The Burren Discovery Trail, awaits all who next visit Thoor Balllee! As part of the Burren Loop, Thoor Ballylee is an essential destination for visitors to South Galway.
.Work on the mill wheel continues, and we thank all involved in this very valuable work of restoration and reminder of local industries and culture. Eugene and PJ Murphy are supervising this difficult and authentic project with Stephen Burke sawmills cutting the raw oak into usable pieces.
With the help of local craftsmen, the cottage this year received a very welcome new thatch! (The poet’s son Michael remembered all sorts of creatures dropping slow from the thatch into his bed beneath).
Sr Mary de Lourdes Fahy, our celebrated author and historian, planted a rose bush in George’s walled garden at Thoor Ballylee, on 14 October to mark the recent closing of the Gort Mercy Convent and, after one hundred and fifty-four years, the end of an era.
We thank Marion Cox heartily for her wisdom and leadership, and welcome Anna O’Donnell as the new chair of the Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society committee, taking the helm in challenging but inspiring times.
With the one hundredth anniversary of the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses on the author’s birthday 2 February 1922, this looks likely to be a year of much attention on Ireland’s literary greats. In the opening (‘Telemachus’) chapter Stephen Dedalus recalls singing his own setting of Yeats’s ‘Who Goes With Fergus’ to his dying mother (‘I sang it alone in the house, holding down the long dark chords. Her door was open: she wanted to hear my music’):
And no more turn aside and brood
On love’s bitter mystery
For Fergus rules the brazen cars […]
Remembering the losses and hardships so many have suffered in the last while, we look forward again to the coming of Fergus, and to welcoming visitors back to Yeats’s place of revolution and reverie in the spring.
The Lady Gregory-Yeats Autumn Gathering are delighted to invite you to the 27th edition of the Autumn Gathering.
7pm (Irish Time) Saturday 25 September 2021 (online)
This year’s gathering features a wealth of exciting speakers packed into a short programme. Plus it is available to all-comers anywhere in the world, as it is being celebrated online (see link below).
Lady Gregory 1893, pastel by Lisa Stillman
7pm (Irish Time) Saturday 25 September 2021 (online via Zoom)
Melissa Sihra, Head of Drama and Associate Professor School of Creative Arts, Trinity College Dublin, will Chair the Gathering.
Actor Úna Clancy will discuss her role as Lady Gregory and the creation of the recent Irish Repertory Theater production in New York, Lady G: Plays and Whisperings of Lady Gregory, with clips from the performance.
James Pethica (Professor of Theatre and English, Williams College), will preview his edition of Lady Gregory’s Shorter Writings 1882-1900, to be published later this year.
Barry Houlihan, Archivist at NUI Galway, will preview the 90th Anniversary of Lady Gregory in 2022 as well as remembering Gregory through the decades, from exhibitions to performance.
Christopher Frayling, Cultural Historian, will discuss John Ford and Lady Gregory.
Time for Q&A, sip tea with a slice of brack in the comfort of your own living-room, and celebrate the magic of Coole Park! Ronnie and Marion and all the crew at the Autumn Gathering do hope you can join them.
Culture Night leaving you hungry for more? Come and join us this weekend at Thoor Ballylee for an exciting al fresco play performance.
The Wild Swan Theatre Company presents:
Coming Homee
by Niall Finnegan
4pm Sunday 19 September
The Mill, Thoor Ballylee
Free Admission
In this short play written by the Wild Swan Theatre Company’s own Niall Finnegan, a chance meeting in the Burren revives both happy and sad memories for two old friends and leads to a lively conclusion…
Performed by Justin McDermott, Max Lee, Judith Gantley and Rose Finnegan.
The play is performed in the beautiful surrounds of the Yeats family’s C14th Norman Tower, Thoor Ballylee. Park in our free car park, walk up the stream, and find us by the mill.
This is an open air venue. If you wish (as well as a jumper!) do bring your own seat.
Would you like to explore the natural beauty of WB Yeats’ home at Thoor Ballylee in County Galway? Hear his folk and fairy tales, make magic wands and fairy doors? Come and share his love for nature and the legends of the past?
Then join us for our Wild Child celebration this Heritage Week on Wednesday 18 August!.
The event is designed to connect children to the wild wonder of the place, and ignite the magic of the realm that Yeats so loved. There are fairy tales and fables from Yeats as well as poetry and song. We are also preparing a fairy walk with fairy volunteers imparting exciting titbits of woodland lore to children and adults.
This is a free event, but due to Covid 19 restrictions registration for workshops is necessary.
Workshops will be held at the following times:
Wild Child Workshops
Wednesday 18 August 2021
11am, 1pm, 3pm
Suitable for children under 12 years of age, and all those young at heart.
Please note due to public health guidelines the interior of Thoor Ballylee remains closed for visitors. However our grounds and walks are open to all year round.
Any questions regarding the Wild Child event, please email Anna on aodonnell111@gmail.com.
Everyone is invited to join the Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society for our annual birthday celebrations! This live picnic will be held at a socially-distanced event in the grounds of Thoor Ballylee at 3pm Sunday June 13. All attendees are invited to read their favourite Yeats poem and say why it matters to them.
Sunday marks the poet WB Yeats’ 156th birthday, but this year the committee would like especially to honour the artists Lily Yeats (her 155th birthday) and Elizabeth Yeats (her 153rd birthday) after whom the Studio at Thoor is named.
Poetry, song, hampers, cakes, the sound of laughter and running water – all the joy of a birthday picnic – what’s not to like! Especially if you’d like to read, prospective participants should contact aodonnell111@gmail.com
Lily (Susan Mary) Yeats (1866-1949): Landscape at Night
Lily Yeats’s work as an embroiderer is increasingly highly regarded, and not before time. This fine example of her needlework earlier this year exceeded the estimate in auction, going for over nearly €7500.
Thoor Ballylee 