After spending a great deal of time in the countryside of Ireland, Yeats began to forget the true countenance of country life. The old tales were still alive for him, but with new, strange, half unreal life, as if in a wizard's glass. His head was so full of fables that he no longer has the knowledge and emotion to write. Then Lady Gregory brought him along to see her friends in the cottages and to talk to old wise men on Slieve Echtage. Thus he began to write again with the true Irish spirit, this play being one written especially for the Irish theatre.