Jacynth Parsons, W.B. Yeats and 'The Songs of Innocence'

WB Yeats' preface to an illustrated edition of William Blake's Songs of Innocence (Medici Society 1927.) The illustrator was a young English girl called Jacynth Parsons*. It is an interesting piece about the illustrator but also about the Ireland of the time. The joke of doing the thing you are refusing to do (i.e. write a preface) is reminiscent of another Irish writer -George Bernard Shaw. GBS would reply to requests for his signature with notes such as 'Sir, I never give autographs! George Bernard Shaw.' There is very little about Jacynth Parsons online and no Wikipedia page.

Prefatory Letter
To the Medici Society.

Dear Sirs,
A Dublin maker of beautiful stained glass brought to my house last night a 16 year old English girl with a face of still intensity, her black plaited hair falling between her shoulders. He laid a large portfolio on a table in the middle of the room, as I had already refused to write the preface for her drawings I carried the portfolio to a table in a distant corner. Those present were a Free State officer, a distinguished dramatist, a country gentleman with imperfect sight who has the history of modern Italy read to him for five hours a day because he thinks it is like that of modern Ireland.We arranged our talk unconsciously that it might contain incidents to amuse a young girl fresh from Grimm's goblins and Treasure Island. Somebody told stories of our civil war, I pointed to the bullet hole in the study door and hinted at all the Free State officer could tell if he were not silent and gloomy. Presently he said Republicans were bound to win the general election in September, and all kinds of horrible things, and in a minute we had exchange civil war for politics.  But I am old and impatient and have listened to one theme or the other most Monday evenings these five years.

So I brought the portfolio back into the middle of the room and for the rest of the evening we talked of nothing but these pictures   It is natural that she should picture pretty children playing among the squirrels, but not that she should draw hands and feet like that; make hair coil in those great heavy folds where there is so much nature and so much pattern; discover the poignant emotion of those two figures half lost in the dark wood;