SOURCE: An introduction to The Midnight Court and The Adventures of a Luckless Fellow, by Brian Merriman and Denis Fellow, translated by Percy Arland Ussher, Jonathan Cape, 1926, pp. 5-12.

In this essay, Yeats, perhaps the most famous of Ireland's poets, connects "The Midnight Court" with Jonathan Swift's Cadenus and Vanessa.

Months ago Mr. Ussher asked me to introduce his translation of The Midnight Court. I had seen a few pages in an Irish magazine; praised its vitality; my words had been repeated; and because I could discover no reason for refusal that did not make me a little ashamed, I consented. Yet I could wish that a Gaelic scholar had been found, or failing that some man of known sobriety of manner and of mind—Professor Trench of Trinity College let us say—to introduce to the Irish reading public this vital, extravagant, immoral, preposterous poem.

Brian Mac...