The Pilgrim
About the text
Yeats first published this poem in 1938. It is out of copyright in Ireland and the EU, but in the United States it stays in copyright until the start of 2034, 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 2034.
It begins: I fasted for some forty days on bread and buttermilk
In brief
SummaryA pilgrim to Lough Derg finds nonsense everywhere, and says so in the pub.
A comic ballad in the voice of a man who went on pilgrimage to Lough Derg after drink and women had turned his head. He fasted on bread and buttermilk, did the rounds of the holy island on his knees, questioned an old man and even the dead in Purgatory, and saw a monstrous black bird from the boat. Every time, the only answer he got was the nonsense refrain "fol de rol de rolly O". Now he is back in the public-house, and he can match anyone, women and learned lovers included, with the same meaningless chorus.
Lines to remember
Is fol de rol de rolly O.
Line by line
Lines 1 to 5Forty days' fast
He fasted for about forty days on bread and buttermilk because drinking with girls, rich or poor, had put his wits astray. His verdict on women is that all they can say is a nonsense refrain. The forty days echo Christ's fast in the desert, with a comic twist.
Lines 6 to 10Round the holy island
On Lough Derg's holy island he went round the stones and prayed at all the Stations on his "marrow-bones", his knees. An old man prayed beside him all day, and the only thing he would say was the refrain.
Lines 11 to 15The dead in Purgatory
Everyone knows the dead are stuck around that place, and that a mother seeking her son would not find him, because the fires of Purgatory have eaten their shapes away. He swears he questioned them, and all they had to say was the same nonsense.
Lines 16 to 20The black bird
In the boat a huge ragged black bird appeared, twenty feet from wingtip to wingtip, flopping and flapping in a great display. He did not stop to ask what it meant, and the boatman could only answer with the refrain. The vision is grand and faintly ridiculous at once.
Lines 21 to 25Back in the pub
Now he leans on the wall of the public-house and challenges all comers, women in rags or silk, learned lovers or any men at all. He can put the lot of them down, and all he has to say is the refrain. What began as defeat has become his weapon.
Themes
The limits of wisdom
The pilgrim looks for answers from women, from an old man at prayer, from the souls of the dead and from a portent in the sky. Each gives only "fol de rol de rolly O". The joke carries a serious point: the deepest questions may have no answer that words can give, and a merry nonsense may be the truthful reply.
Holiness and drink
The poem runs from the pub to the pilgrimage and back to the pub. Penance does not reform the pilgrim; it frees him. He returns not chastened but confident, having learnt that the holy island and the public-house end in the same song.
Context
First published in New Poems (Cuala Press, Dublin, 1938). Lough Derg in County Donegal is a lake whose small island, Station Island, has been a place of penitential pilgrimage for centuries, known as St Patrick's Purgatory. Pilgrims fast, go barefoot and pray on their knees at the stone circles called beds or Stations.
In his last years Yeats wrote many poems in the manner of popular ballads and songs, often in the voice of a rough, disreputable speaker who mocks conventional piety. This one sits among the drinking songs and wild old men of that period.
Form
Five five-line stanzas: four long, loping lines of seven beats in two rhyming couplets (with rough rhymes such as "boat" and "out"), then the fixed nonsense refrain. The long lines have the swing of a street ballad or drinking song, and each stanza sets up a question only for the refrain to knock it down.