The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #80254 Message #1461806
Posted By: GUEST,Gail
15-Apr-05 - 12:44 AM
Thread Name: Tune Req: The Lake Isle of Innisfree (W. B. Yeats)
Subject: RE: Tune Req: Old Melody Yeats 'Lake Isle of Innisfree
I should have put this originally under the subject Origins, rather than Tune Req, I guess.
I shall try to be even more specific. What I am asking about is a tune (an OLD tune dating to at least 1925, not one of many newer settings) to the William Butler Yeats poem "Lake Isle of Innisfree." (This is what Willa so kindly and correctly responded to.) This is not a similarly named song "Isle of Innisfree" that keeps popping up in all my searches; this song is unrelated. (I had previously read the entire thread in this forum concerning Isle of Innisfree, which took over an hour, and yielded no information on my specific quest.)
The well-known and frequently published Yeats poem is in three stanzas, beginning,
"I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree
and a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made..."
I was hoping for information on not only the melody but the origin of this specific tune as applied to this poem. Where might someone have heard and learned this tune in the early part of the 20th century? Was the melody used for something else prior to its being used for the Yeats poem?
Thank you, Gail