looking at the pictures of the younger Yeats it seemed to me that
for the first time we had something which could be called altogether
Gaelic. The incompleteness of the sketches suggests the term "folk"
as expressing exactly the inspiration of this very genuine art. We
have had abundance of Irish folk-lore, but we knew nothing of folk-art
until the figures of Jack Yeats first romped into our imagination a
few years ago. It was the folk-feeling lit up by genius and
interpreted by love. It was not, and is now less than ever, the
patronage bestowed by the intellectual artist on the evidently
picturesque forms of a life below his own.

I suspect Jack Yeats thinks the life of the Sligo fisherman is as
good a method of life as any, and that he could share it for a
long time without being in the least desirous of a return to the
comfortable life of convention. The name of Muglas Hyde suggests
itself to me as a literary parallel. These sketches have all the
prodigality of invention, the exuberance of gesture, and animation
of "The Twisting of the Rope," and the poetry is of as high or higher a
n order. In the drawing called "Midsummer Eve" there is a mystery
which is not merely the mystery of night and shadow. It is the
mystery of the mingling of spirit with spirit which is suggested
by the solitary figure with face upturned to the stars. We have
all memories of such summer nights when into the charmed heart falls
the enchantment we call ancient, though the days have no fellows,
nor will ever have any, when the earth glows with the dusky hues
of rich pottery, and the stars, far withdrawn into faery altitudes,
dance with a gaiety which is more tremendous and solemn than any
repose. The night of this picture is steeped in such a dream, and
I know not whether it is communicated, or a feeling arising in myself;
but there seems everywhere in it the breathing of life, subtle,