editor's note: World-reknowned painter, sculptor, carver, photographer, Paul Nixon has created several of NewMyths' favorite cover artworks, including the cover for our current issue. His gallery "Celtic Twilight" reads like a primer of the fairy realm of ancient Ireland. Here he discusses how his art has been inspired by the tales of his homeland and by the poetry of William Butler Yeats. 

An Artist's Journey Into Faerie

Nonfiction – by Paul Nixon

When I was growing up seven miles from Dublin in the village of Clondalkin, the highlight of the year was visiting my grandparents. They lived at the foot of Tievebaun (White Mountain) in the Dartry Mountains, in a 300-year-old thatched cottage without electricity or running water. My father said when my mother first took him home to meet her parents, he felt he had stepped back in time two hundred years.

After a four-hour drive, the mountain would finally come into view and we would leave the twentieth century behind. The road narrowed, turning from tarmac into gravel and loose stone with tall grass in the center that swished against the undercarriage. Briars on both sides barely allowed the car to pass. My father muttered words not for the ears of children as thorns scored the sides of the car. As we approached the clearing where the cottage nestled against the mountain, my grandparents and my Uncle James would be outside, having heard the car's engine droning along the lane. When we turned off the engine, the silence was so complete I could feel it in my soul. Everything had a sense of great age. We seemed to have crossed an unseen barrier into a magical realm. 

My photograph of Granny’s house below Tievebaun:

Once upon a time, travelers were cautioned against coming to this region with rumors of subhuman beings and other nasty prowlers. My grandmother would take me on long walks though this mystical countryside all the time. Listening to her tales, I imagined unseen creatures watching from behind an ancient stone wall or a dense thicket. Serendipity and enchantment were always close.

The area around the Dartry range, which is in the northwest counties of Leitrim and Sligo, is often called Yeats Country because of its connection to one of my greatest influences, the poet, dramatist, writer, and politician William Butler Yeats. He is one of the foremost figures in twentieth century literature and a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival.

Yeats' mother brought the family to live in Sligo in 1872, exposing her children to the rich folklore of household staff, workmen, and boatmen. “It seemed that everyone in Sligo talked of fairies,” the poet later recalled. Throughout his five decades of writing he always acknowledged the inspiration he drew from this beloved landscape. It was also there that my interest in fairies and the supernatural blossomed. Interestingly, both Yeats and I lived in Dublin, are Geminis, and were inspired by another famous Dartry mountain, Benbulben.

In 1890, in London Magazine, in an essay titled “The Irish Fairies,” Yeats wrote, "On the side of Benbulben is a white square in the limestone. It is said to be the door to fairyland. There is no more inaccessible place in existence than this white square door; no human foot has ever gone near it, and not even the mountain goats can browse the saxifrage beside its mysterious whiteness. Tradition says that it swings open at nightfall, and lets pour through an unearthly troop of hurrying spirits. For those gifted to hear their voices, the air will be full at such a moment with a sound like whistling. Many have been carried away out of the neighbouring villages by this troop of riders." 

Here is my photo of the Fairy Door.