The Fairy Doctor

W. B. Yeatsfrom Early and uncollected poems24 lines

The fairy doctor comes our wayOver the sorrel-covered wold⁠—Now sadly, now unearthly gay,A little withered man, and old.

He knows by signs of secret witThe man whose hour of death draws nigh,And who will moan in the under pit,And who foregather in the sky.

He sees the fairy hosting moveBy heath or hollow or rushy mere,And then his heart fills full of love,And full his eyes of fairy cheer.

Cures he hath for cow or goatWith fairy-smitten udders dry⁠—Cures for calves with ’plaining throat,That sickening near their mothers lie;

And many a herb and many a spellFor hurts and ails and lover’s moan⁠—For all save him who pining fell,Glamoured by fairies for their own.

Now be courteous, now be kind,Lest he may some glamour foldClosely round us, body and mind⁠—The little withered man, and old.

Text: Poetry, by W. B. Yeats (Standard Ebooks, 2024), from the collected editions of 1908 to 1928. Public domain.

In brief

Summary

Villagers describe the old fairy doctor and his uncanny powers.

The speakers are villagers watching the fairy doctor come across the hills: a little, withered old man, sometimes sad and sometimes strangely merry. He knows who is about to die and where their souls will go, he sees the fairy host ride by, and he has cures for sick cattle, hurts and lovesickness. Only one kind of sufferer is beyond him: the person the fairies have claimed for their own. The last stanza turns to advice. Be polite to him, the villagers say, in case he wraps his own spell around you. The poem is half portrait, half warning.

Lines to remember

Now sadly, now unearthly gay,

A little withered man, and old.

Glamoured by fairies for their own.

Line by line

Lines 1 to 4The old man arrives
The fairy doctor crosses the "sorrel-covered wold" towards the village. He is "Now sadly, now unearthly gay", his mood swinging between this world and the other. The plain last line, "A little withered man, and old", will return to close the poem.
Lines 5 to 8Knowledge of death
He can read "signs of secret wit" that show whose death is near, and even where each soul will end up: moaning "in the under pit" or gathering in the sky. The villagers report this calmly, as a plain fact about their neighbour.
Lines 9 to 12Among the fairy host
When he sees the fairies riding out over heath, hollow and "rushy mere", his heart "fills full of love". This is the source of his power: he belongs partly to the fairy world, and the sight of it fills his eyes with "fairy cheer".
Lines 13 to 20His cures
Stanzas four and five list his remedies in the practical terms of a farming village: cures for cows and goats whose udders the fairies have dried, for sickly calves, for "hurts and ails and lover's moan". The one case he cannot cure is the person who has pined away, "Glamoured by fairies for their own".
Lines 21 to 24A warning
The villagers end with advice to themselves: "be courteous" and "be kind", or he may fold a spell "Closely round us, body and mind". The repeated last line brings back the small, harmless-looking figure, now with a hint of menace.

Themes

Folk belief

The poem takes rural Irish belief on its own terms. Fairies dry up cows' milk, sicken calves and steal people away, and the fairy doctor is the local expert who can set some of it right. Nothing is explained or doubted: "fairy-smitten udders" are as real as a sore throat. The flat, listing manner of stanzas four and five makes the belief feel everyday.

Between two worlds

The doctor stands on the border between the human and the fairy worlds. He is "unearthly gay", knows the fate of souls and loves the "fairy hosting". That same closeness makes him both useful and dangerous. He can heal, but he can also cast a glamour, and the villagers' courtesy in the last stanza is half respect, half fear.

Context

This is one of the early poems Yeats later left out of his collections. It reflects his youthful interest in Irish country belief: in 1888 he edited Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry, a gathering of stories about the fairies and the people they carry off. In Irish tradition a fairy doctor was a man or woman thought able to cure illnesses the fairies had caused, often with herbs and charms, much as the poem describes.

Its world is the one of "The Stolen Child" and "The Host of the Air", where the fairies lure people away. Here the view is from the village rather than from the fairy side: a practical, slightly nervous community that relies on a man it does not fully trust.

Form

Six four-line stanzas in short lines of four beats, rhymed ABAB ("way", "wold", "gay", "old"). The last line of the poem repeats the fourth, with "A" changed to "The", so the poem closes in a ring: the doctor is last seen as he was first seen, but now he is feared.