Crazy Jane Reproved
About the text
Yeats first published this poem in 1932. It is out of copyright in Ireland and the EU, but in the United States it stays in copyright until the start of 2028, and this site is served partly from American servers. So for now we give the notes without the full text; it will appear here in 2028.
It begins: I care not what the sailors say
In brief
SummaryCrazy Jane is warned against loving a roaring, ranting journeyman.
As the title says, Crazy Jane is being reproved, and the voice may be her own or another's. Storms and thunder mean nothing, the speaker says: they only show that Heaven is yawning. Europa was a fool to swap a lover for a bull. Heaven took such pains over the delicate whorls of a single shell that its joints cracked; so do not hang your heart on a noisy, ranting journeyman. Each stanza ends with the nonsense refrain "Fol de rol", laughing the lesson off.
Lines to remember
A roaring, ranting journeyman.
Line by line
Lines 1 to 7Heaven yawns
The sailors may fear the thunderbolts and storms, but these only show Heaven yawning, bored rather than angry. Europa, carried off by a god in the form of a bull, gave up a lover for it and was a fool. The refrain shrugs.
Lines 8 to 14The delicate shell
Heaven's real effort went into small, fine work: rounding the spiral of a shell and lining its secret passages with mother-of-pearl nearly broke its joints. The moral follows: never give your heart to a roaring, ranting journeyman.
Themes
Loud and delicate
The poem contrasts noise with fine making. Storms and a bull-god are loud displays; the shell's "elaborate whorl" is the true labour of heaven. Jane is told to prefer the delicate over the roaring, which in love means refusing the swaggering man.
Mockery of warnings
The title promises a telling-off, but the tone is light. The refrain "Fol de rol" is nonsense syllables from old songs, and it can make the advice sound either sensible or silly. Given Jane's loyalty to Jack elsewhere, the reproof may not stick.
Context
The poem belongs to the sequence Words for Music Perhaps, first collected by the Cuala Press in 1932 and then in The Winding Stair and Other Poems (Macmillan, 1933). It is one of seven Crazy Jane poems in the sequence.
The journeyman recalls Jane's lover, Jack the Journeyman, of "Crazy Jane and the Bishop". The myth of Europa, carried off by Zeus disguised as a bull, links it to Yeats's other poems of gods descending to women, such as "Leda and the Swan".
Form
Two seven-line stanzas: six lines of four beats rhyming in alternating pairs and a closing couplet, often with half rhymes (stones and yawns, upon and journeyman), and a refrain of nonsense syllables. The mythic grandeur of the images is punctured each time by the comic chorus.
