Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland. Collected and Arranged by Lady Gregory. With Two Essays and Notes by W. B. Yeats. In Two Series. New York and London,  G. P. Putnam's Sons, The Knickerbocker Press. 1920.

The graceful fashion in which Lady Gregory has set herself to the task of gathering and recording personal testimonies as to Irish beliefs and experiences of that fertile people makes of these two volumes a rich and delightful field of phantasy study. There is even the quaint flavor of the language with its suggestive whimsicality of expression which at times suggests a sage criticism of the belief admitted. In spite of the unquestioning acceptance of the vast world of faery or fallen angelic begins or of their own dead constantly around them; in spite of the variety of experiences with “them,” which are almost thrown out of court by the very uncritical credulity with which they are retold and only meagerly explained; in spite of all this there is something also in the shrewd Irish mind and in its innocence of expression which gives one a respect for their wholesome reality in the midst of the phantastic multiplication of their beliefs. This respect cannot be so wholeheartedly accorded to their more learned exponent, Mr. Yeats, in his effort to add explanation and weight to their phantasies and their more simple faith. One leaves his comments with a realization of the sad confusion of an intellect drawn down into the maze of unconscious creation rather than waving its clearer banner of interpretation above the mass and confusion of striving wishes, desires of the human mind in its struggles with a hard world. Let these soften realities and supplement life's sharper outlines with phantasied beings and their activities but not to the confusion of the intellectual understanding that seeks progress.

Freud gave us the key to the mysteries of belief when he pointed out the mind's striving after wish fulfillment, its power of projection of phantasy as well as of distortion of such wishes before consciousness is permitted sight of them. This is a key which unlocks scientifically much that was otherwise perplexing, even awesome in folklore, in the beliefs everywhere to whi