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Comment 5 of 15, added on November 17th, 2005 at 2:44 AM.
We have been studying poetry for almost six years in the department. The common belief among my students is that Yeats'Child is Ireland. they say the poem is a longing for "homeland", Ireland. It was stolen in Yeats' time and to my students' comments it is still lost or stolen. They say Yeats would write poems of similar emotions if he were alive today.
fehmi turgut from Turkey
Comment 4 of 15, added on August 22nd, 2005 at 7:24 PM.
As in most poetry, the reader's free to draw their own conclusions. Yeats was writing of the changeling tradition, (Fairy and Folk Tales of Ireland) where fairies steal a human child and substitute a stand-in.
It's obvious from the tradition that the stories are explanations for autism, catatonia, or similar conditions. Yeats poem makes this explicit; the stolen child has escaped into a dreamlike world of beauty and exitement. In the last stanza pathos of the common, comforting world remind us of what's lost.
Survey info about changling mythology at http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/britchange.html#Strathspey
I. Subpatre
Comment 3 of 15, added on May 30th, 2005 at 12:32 PM.
This poem can express Yeats' longing for the homeland (Ireland) as his family moved from Ireland to England, and as we know he didn't like it. These fairies would try to steal the child and carry him back to Ireland. Sleugh wood is Slish Wood at the Lough Gill, Sligo lies at the lake also - a very important note, as we know Yeats grew there (http://www.sligozone.net/lgill.htm) So in my opinion this tale is about everyone's need to maintain contact with home. A dose of nationalism? Correct me if I'm wrong.
Konrad Stobiecki from Poland
Comment 2 of 15, added on March 15th, 2005 at 8:15 PM.
I believe that the peom is a metaphor about a child's wish to grow up too quickly and experience the real world. The fairies are trying to show the child the "magical" world of childhood is much better than a "world full of weeping." I would be interested in other interpretations of this poem's true meaning.
Steve Pwnzor from United States
Comment 1 of 15, added on February 5th, 2005 at 8:26 PM.
I am not an expert on poetry least of all Yeats, though I do admire the beauty of The Two Trees. My knowledge of The Stolen Child (also) comes from Loreena McKennitt's musical rendition of it.
I believe faeries existed and exist as creations of the human mind to explain the inexplicable or at times to blame others for human action. In this poem it is interesting that the faeries have a perception of the world as a painful place and this motivates them to spare children that pain by removing them from the human world. I see in this poem a metaphor for the all too frequent stealing of childhood "The Stolen Child"
by parents and other abusive adults who have themselves been abused and have had their childhood (and their inner "child" stolen.
Ian McKenna
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We have been studying poetry for almost six years in the department. The common belief among my students is that Yeats'Child is Ireland. they say the poem is a longing for "homeland", Ireland. It was stolen in Yeats' time and to my students' comments it is still lost or stolen. They say Yeats would write poems of similar emotions if he were alive today.
fehmi turgut from Turkey