'I will arise and go now . . .': An Offaly connection with a famous W.B. Yeats poem

Growing up in ‘Innisfree’ (today ‘Loughmore Lodge’ ) on Clonminch Road in Tullamore I began to detest W.B. Yeats’s mawkish dirge about the Lake Isle. My grandfather, who had once visited the island, was obsessed by the poem and insisted that I recite it at every party.

Later, as a young town planner, I blamed the verse for the rash of holiday homes that were beginning to appear in every beauty spot in Ireland and I felt that it was Yeats who had provided the moral justification for this desecration. If a well known poet could simply arise and go and build in whatever idyllic place he chose, why shouldn’t everybody else?

But - would he get planning permission? I would put that to the test.

Having never seen Innisfree and having no intention of ever setting foot on the hateful place, I bought an Ordnance Survey map and drew a traditional clay and wattled Irish cottage slap bang in the middle of the island. I surrounded it with nine bean rows and a hive for the honey bee- or several honey bees, if it came to that. I had thought of providing nests for the linnets but not being fully au fait with the necessary ornithological arrangements, I decided to leave the linnets out.

Now, in those days there were loopholes in the Planning Act which allowed you to make an application on property which you didn’t own - nor did you have to put up a site notice. So, I had all I needed to make a valid application to Sligo County Council who would have to deal with it whether they liked it or not. I sent off my package and having lit the blue fuse, retired to a safe distance to watch the fun.

Recently, I obtained the internal reports of the Council’s Planning Section which were professionally objective and surprisingly didn’t reflect the irritation of busy officials who most likely thought they had better things to be doing than dealing with a crank or a comedian.

My planning application was referred to the Arts Council for advice and its Secretary, the writer Mervyn Wall, replied. He noted the similarity of my proposal to the cemetery of Whispering Glades in Evelyn Waugh's satirical novel The Loved One which had reserved an area containing a small cabin, bean rows and beehives solely for the interment of writers and, anticipating the ridicule which the Council would endure in the event of a grant, urged the rejection of my application.

Two months later, to my delight, I received a refusal, set out in impenetrable bureaucratic planning speak. To copper fasten it, on April Fool’s Day 1971, I lodged an appeal with the Minister for Local Government and six months later he turned me down too. Having put a stop to Mr Yeats cabin building ambitions, I was content at last.

Long, long after I had forgotten the whole episode, the young Sligo artist Clea van der Grijn contacted me to enquire if there was any truth in the story she had heard that I had once tried to make Yeats's dream come true. Having confessed that the opposite was the case I was invited to join an enthusiastic group of local artists, architects and poets who wanted to honour the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the poet’s birth by responding in their own, non interventionist, ways to his mythic island.

So, on a surprisingly still and bright January day, I stood on Innisfree for the first time.

It is a tiny untouched knoll, quite close to the shoreline of Lough Gill and covered in holly and oak. It rises up from the landing place on its eastern shore to a slight hill on its western and northern sides from which stunning views up the lake towards Sligo town are revealed.

A child's dream of a desert island, it is big enough to get lost in and yet small enough to be found again. From the western bluff you can actually hear the sound of lake water lapping on the shore below. It is a very special and romantic place and only the most insensitive developer (and certainly not a poet) would think of dumping a holiday home in the middle of it. I was instantly won over and fell in love with it as both Yeats and my grandfather once had.

I don't believe for a moment that Yeats actually wanted to build a holiday home on it - indeed he never lived in Sligo afterwards and sensitively restored a castle in Galway.

But standing on the little hill, I recollected those convoluted and torturously worded planning refusals which had long ago conclusively protected Innisfree.

Thanks to the planners of Sligo County Council, should we ever find ourselves in exile and far from home, we can still recite the words of ’The Lake Isle’ and know that a very special place where all our troubles will vanish is still unspoiled and still waiting for us.

Just don’t try to build a cabin.

Fergal MacCabe is a retired architect and town planner, an artist and author, and a regular contributor to the Tullamore Tribune on planning issues and other matters