Q 01/05

In which Dublin suburb was W. B. Yeats born in 1865?

A) Howth

B) Rathfarnham

C) Sandymount

D) Dalkey

Answer · why

C) Sandymount

His father was a lawyer turned portrait painter and his mother came from a west-of-Ireland milling and shipping family.

Q 02/05

Which county did Yeats regard as his childhood and spiritual home, his "country of the heart"?

A) Galway

B) Sligo

C) Mayo

D) Kildare

Answer · why

B) Sligo

His mother's Pollexfen family lived at Merville there, and he is buried in the county today.

Q 03/05

Which two conditions may explain Yeats's trouble with mathematics and languages at school?

A) Stammering and asthma

B) Epilepsy and colour blindness

C) Deafness and short sight

D) Tone deafness and dyslexia

Answer · why

D) Tone deafness and dyslexia

An early Godolphin School report called him "very poor in spelling" but he loved biology and zoology.

Q 04/05

Yeats's brother Jack won Ireland's first Olympic medal, a silver in 1924, for what?

A) Fencing

B) Rowing

C) Boxing

D) A painting

Answer · why

D) A painting

The Liffey Swim took silver in the arts competition at the Paris Games.

Q 05/05

How many copies of Yeats's 1886 pamphlet Mosada were printed, paid for by his father?

A) 100

B) 250

C) 500

D) 1,000

Answer · why

A) 100

His first full collection followed in 1889.