The wheel of life turns again for Yeats family

Harpist Caitriona Yeats performs this week at her childhood haunt of Thoor Ballylee, the tower house of her grandfather WB Yeats, says Alan O’Riordan

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N 1917, William Butler Yeats paid a small sum for Thoor Ballylee, a 15th-century tower house in Galway. The building had long attracted Yeats, given its venerable age (what he called its “severity and antiquity”), its location in Yeats’ mystical west, and its proximity to Coole Park, home to his friend, collaborator, and benefactor Lady Augusta Gregory.