LibriVox volunteers bring you 17 recordings of The Fiddler of Dooney by William Butler Yeats (1865-1939). This was the Weekly Poetry project for December 4th to December 11th, 2011.
William Butler Yeats was a notable Irish poet and playwright. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923.
The Fiddler of Dooney first appeared in Yeats’ 1899 book of poetry ‘The Wind Among the Reeds`. (Summary by Lucy Perry)
Download locations: mp3 128kb : mp3 64kb : ogg vorbis.
Catalogue pages: LibriVox, Internet Archive.
Zip of the entire book (9.5MB@64kb), featuring all 17 readers of this poem.
The Fiddler of Dooney
When I play on my fiddle in Dooney,
Folk dance like a wave of the sea;
My cousin is priest in Kilvarnet,
My brother in Moharabuiee.I passed my brother and cousin:
They read in their books of prayer;
I read in my book of songs
I bought at the Sligo fair.When we come at the end of time,
To Peter sitting in state,
He will smile on the three old spirits,
But call me first through the gate;For the good are always the merry,
Save by an evil chance,
And the merry love the fiddle
And the merry love to dance:And when the folk there spy me,
They will all come up to me,
With ‘Here is the fiddler of Dooney!’
And dance like a wave of the sea.
This week’s poem can be found here.
