In the 1880s she had opposed Home Rule, and as late as November 1898 she could privately confess her doubts about joining “ruffians” like Michael Davitt, William O’Brien and Archbishop Welsh on the council of the Gaelic League; but, like WBY, she had chafed under the dead hand of conservative Irish Protestant society and was conscious that change was afoot. As she later remarked, “we are all born bigots in Ireland & want a great deal of grace to get us out of bondage”. In an article for the Cornhill, May 1900, she finally (and cautiously) “came out” as an Irish nationalist. She had found her role.For WBY, she provided access to local Galway tradition, through the Irish language but from a Big House perspective; it was a heady combination. As with nearly all the women who meant something to him, their friendship quickly coalesced around an idea for collaborative work, in this case a large-scale survey of folklore and fairy tale which eventually took the form of six long essays by WBY. In exploring the mythological origins of folklore, WBY showed himself less and less chary of offending Catholic sensibilities. “The Tribes of Danu”, published in November 1897, aroused clerical criticism by dismissing the philistine aspects of modern Catholicism, and comparing the doctrine of transubstantiation with sighting fairies; a year later his generalisations about pagan beliefs among the Irish peasantry would be considered equally offensive.

In old age, he recalled:”My object was to find actual experience of the supernatural, for I did not believe, nor do I now, that it is possible to discover in the textbooks of the schools, in the manuals sold by religious booksellers, even in the subtle reverie of saints, the most violent force in history … when we passed the door of some peasant’s cottage, we passed out of Europe as that word is understood.” “I have longed”, she said once, “to turn Catholic, that I might be nearer to the people, but you have taught me that paganism brings me nearer still.”With her knowledge of the world, Jamesian apercus, and tendency to artistic lion-hunting, Gregory provided a sophisticated sounding-board for analysing Yeats’s complicated relationships with interesting people. How he appeared to her at the outset of their long relationship is conjectural. His humour appealed: and WBY presented himself to her, through letters and anecdotes, in a feline and amusing way His genius and charisma were electrifying And so were his good looks. In his relationship with her, as with many others (men as well as women), WBY used his gift for fascination to “loan himself out”.

He slipped easily into the fantasies of others, rather like one of the succubi he read about in treatises on magic. But Gregory’s firm grasp on reality meant that their friendship, unlike many others, never soured, though it may at the outset have rested on some unfulfilled hopes. They were mentor and artist: while she addressed him as “Willie”, his letters to her remain to “Lady Gregory”. The formality is surprising even for the time: yet they rapidly became each other’s closest friend and confidant, and remained so – with only an occasional slight passage of annoyance – until her death nearly 40 years later.Yet at first, in the later 1890s, her letters to him carried a tentative air of gaiety and romance.