As a collection of three of Yeats' pamphlet-esque collections of Irish folklore - Celtic Twilight, Secret Rose and Stories of Red Hanrahan - this seems like it should be great. But a weird thing happened on the way to its collection: Yeats grew up. As happens to many of us, as he matured Yeats grew more conservative; he quit the Golden Dawn, the occult society, and sidled towards more conventional religion. By the time he put this collection together, he was embarrassed by some of its more flowery ideas, and the end result is that he edited all the fun out of it. See my review of Celtic Twilight, and then consider this: neither of the quotes in that review made it into this book.

It's not worthless; Yeats collecting Irish folklore will never be worthless. But the original is exhilarating, bursting with ideas; this is more stodgy. It's just not as cool.

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