The Ballad of Father Gilligan

Summary

Yeats tells a story in verse. An old priest was

weary and sad because most of his flock had
died. He was sent for by a sick man, but fell
asleep in his chair before answering the call.
The stars multiplied and God talked to
mankind.
In the morning, Father Gilligan awoke with a
start, realizing that he had not done his duty.
He rides to the sick man's house where his
wife answers the door and says that the man
has died. Father Gilligan is horrified and cries
"mavrone!" until the woman thanks him for
coming the previous night. He falls to his
knees and thanks God for sending an angel
down to do his work when he was too tired to
do so.
Analysis
This poem takes a ballad form - a traditional
form, usually sung, with regular, short
stanzas that tell a story. It has a more overtly
religious content than most of Yeats's poems.
As a protestant who turned to theosophy and
mysticism, Yeats usually stays away from
Catholic themes. Yeats also usually stays
away from the Irish language, which he uses
in this poem when he writes, "mavrone!"
which is the Irish, "mo bhron," a cry of grief.
The poem not only speaks to the poverty of
rural Ireland, but also to their extreme
religiosity. The priest is horrified by the fact
that he did not make it to the bedside of the
sick man before he died because no one
performed the rites of extreme unction,
meaning in the Catholic tradition that the
man did not die in a state of grace, and
therefore cannot go to heaven. The divine
intervention which caused this not to be the
case is an affirmation of a loving, kind God.
Yeats intends this ballad as an homage to the
traditional poetry and legend of his country.
He was a collector of similar Irish stories and
songs and appreciated their immediate, naive
beauty. Certainly this tale draws upon the
character as well as the form of the
traditional Irish ballad.
Justify the title
W.B.Yeats' poem "The Ballad of Father
Gilligan" is a literary ballad based on an
incident either true or fictional belonging to
the poor illiterate Irish folk.
A ballad is usually a short narrative poem
telling an interesting story. Since Yeats' poem
"The Ballad of Father Gilligan" tells the story
of how God himself took pity on the weary
Gilligan and sent an angel instead of him to
minister the last communion to a dying
parishioner and thus ensuring that his soul
went to heaven, the title of the poem is
indeed very apt.
Since Yeats' ballad is a literary ballad he has
deliberately worked into his poem some of
the characteristics of the traditional ballad
which belonged to the oral tradition and was
never written down.
He has employed the ballad
quatrain throughout his
poem,comprising  eight syllables in the first
and the third lines which do not rhyme and
six syllables in the second and fourth lines
which rhyme.
Another important feature of the traditional
ballad which Yeats has incorporated in his
poem is repetition. For instance he has
repeated "moth-hour" twice to poetically
describe dusk and dawn.