William Butler Yeats became the first Nobel laureate among the Irish in general and Irish writers in particular, which is entirely fair - the famous Encyclopedia Britannica to this day considers Yeats one of the greatest English-language poets of the 20th century. Less known to the Russian reader is another Yeats - a passionate romantic and an admirer of pre-Christian Celtic antiquity, in which he saw the basis for the spiritual revival of Ireland, torn apart by contradictions between Catholic and Protestant faiths. The pagan past of Ireland also attracted Yeats due to its spontaneous closeness to the supernatural, elusive moments of intuitive familiarization with the harmony of nature. These charming legends, where the line between ancient Irish life and the magical world of brownies, fairies, and elves sometimes turns out to be completely indistinguishable, are a real gift for those who are accustomed to consider prose as one of the forms of poetry, permeating with its breath the entire earthly existence of a person.