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SOUTH GALWAY, the location of Coole Park and Thoor Ballylee, was special to WB Yeats and an area where he spent some 30 summers, composing many of his finest works.

The efforts by a group of local people to have the famous Yeats' Tower (Thoor Ballylee), near Gort, south Galway, reopened is to be welcomed and supported.

The promotion of a trail which incorporates many of the historical sites across South Galway could yield a large dividend for tourism in the region, according to its organisers who will launch the trail’s website next week.

“ We are no petty people. We are of the great stocks of Europe. We are the people of Burke; we are the people of Swift, the people of Emmet, the people of Parnell. We have created most of the modern literature of this country. We have created the best of its political intelligence...." so spoke out WB Yeats proudly, during a passionate debate in the senate in June 1925.

If anyone thought that academics sharing their enthusiasm for the landscape, writers and artists associated with Coole Park, Co Galway, would be boring and stuffy, they had a surprise last weekend. There were some jaw-dropping moments when Lady Augusta Gregory’s secret love affair was revealed; and when WB Yeats went off the rails in the years following her death, and had a series of love affairs.

The Eighteenth Lady Gregory Autumn Gathering - a celebration of one of the leading figures of the Irish Literary Revival, 19th century Irish writing and culture, and south Galway - returns from September 28 to 30.

It is almost two decades since the first Lady Gregory Autumn Gathering at Coole and the event goes from strength to strength with an impressive line-up of speakers and events announced at the launch at Coole last weekend.

South Galway still echoes with stories of Antoine O Raifteiri , and 18th century blind poet and fiddle player in the ancient bardic tradition. His best known poems are probably Cill Aodain, and Anach Cuan. He never wrote his poems down, but they were collected by Douglas Hyde, and Lady Gregory, from those whom he taught them to, after his death.

Sir William Gregory of Coole, Co Galway, and the husband of Lady Augusta in his later years, has been vilified unfairly by historians and commentators, said Brian Walker, professor of Irish Studies at Queen’s University last weekend. As the member of parliament who introduced the so called ‘Gregory clause’ as the Great Famine raged through the land, he did so for humane motives; but it was exploited by some ruthless landlords to clear their land.

Fáilte Ireland officially launched its newly-revitalised Yeats Passport Trail — which takes in three sites in south Galway — at an event at Sligo City Hall this week. The event coincided with the 70th anniversary of the death of William Butler Yeats on January 28 1939. The trail was officially launched by another Nobel laureate, the renowned poet Seamus Heaney.