The Stories of Red Hanrahan (written in the musical speech of the poet's beloved Galway), describes the red-haired country schoolmaster, Red Hanrahan, and his supernatural experiences.

Hanrahan, a worldly mortal who has experienced for himself the supernatural power of the Sidhe (the faeries), is a traveling Irish bard, caught between two worlds: the supernatural and the natural, thus mirroring Yeats’s attraction to the spirit world and his fascination with good and evil.

Since they were written during the fin de siècle period when literary fashion (epitomized by the French symbolists), were expressing a world-weariness and pessimism that celebrated the triumph of evil, it is understandable that Yeats’s tales often articulate that prevailing mood.

These early fictional works also identify the themes that were to occupy Yeats’s poetic genius for the remainder of his life.

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS (1865-1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. He studied poetry in his youth, and from an early age was fascinated by both Irish legends and the occult. In 1923, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for what the Nobel Committee described as "inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation."