Changing the story in Yeats’ The Song of Wandering Aengus

While Yeats made frequent use of mythological and ancient literary sources in developing his poetry, scholars have argued that his poem The Song of Wandering Aengus has no connection to the eighth-century Aislinge Óengusso (The Dream of Óengus) other than the title. However, using a structural analysis to explore the differences and correspondences between the narratives of poem and tale, the symbolic associations, and the romantic idealism, Roxanne demonstrates that the two are very closely aligned. The poem, first published in 1897, was originally entitled A Mad Song but, when Yeats was reviewing the poem two years later, he saw something in it that resonated for him with the medieval tale and subsequently changed the title to The Song of Wandering Aengus. With a simple nominative change, Yeats was able to transform A Mad Song into a mythopoetic narrative aligned with the aisling tradition of Irish poetry, and which successfully incorporated political, spiritual and romantic associations into a deceptively simple lyric poem. In doing this, he also highlighted the aesthetic beauty of Aislinge Óengusso, a tale which has not received the same level of academic and cultural interest as the heroic literature and is deserving of closer examination.