Ireland, particularly the geographic region that includes Counties Sligo and Leitrim along the country’s north Atlantic coast, forms the backbone of the poem. Yeats name-checks specific natural features of the Irish landscape while painting a vivid picture of these sites. That each of the poem’s first three stanzas begins with “Where” points to the importance of setting as a defining feature of “The Stolen Child.” The fairies’ temptation could only occur “Where dips the rocky highland / Of Sleuth Wood in the lake” (1-2), “Where the wave of moonlight glosses / The dim gray sands with light, / Far off by furthest Rosses” (13-15), or “Where the wandering water gushes / From the hills above Glen-Car” (28-29). The verbs—“dips” (1), “glosses” (13), “gushes” (28)—grant agency to the landscape, making it an accomplice of the fairies in their attempt to lure the child away with them. The enticements they use to attract...