'The Celtic Twilight' can read simply as an anthropological compilation of beliefs and superstitions, a fascinating, entertaining and sometimes hilarious journey through the dreamlike world of Irish faery and folklore, as related to Yeats by the peasants of County Sligo at the end of the nineteenth century. But there is a deeper significance to this book. It can be seen as Yeats' subtle polemic against too concrete a view of human existence, as his call for a return to a more magical view of life and Nature: where the Unseen is nearer than we believe, where springs are holy, trees have souls, and the very air shimmers with spirituality.