The new Yeats Trail visits 14 places in County Sligo that are deeply connected to the life and poetry of W B Yeats.
It journeys through an area Yeats referred to in his poem Under Saturn as the “valley his fathers called their home”. This is a landscape that the poet knew intimately and that remains unchanged from his day.
The trail starts at Knocknarea, a hill topped by an important Stone Age cairn under which the legendary warrior, Queen Maeve, is said to be buried. It’s a place that features prominently in Yeats’ poetry.
The seaside village of Rosses Point, where Yeats spent many summer holidays, is next followed by Drumcliffe, where the poet is famously buried, as he desired, in the shadow of Ben Bulben, which is the next stop on the trail. The table mountain dominates the Sligo landscape and both its beauty and the mythology surrounding it influenced Yeats greatly, leading him to write the poem Under Ben Bulben.