Rat Island A Tall Tale? This is a current picture of the Lake Isle of Inisfree from the Google satellite map. The pier from which the tours depart is in the bottom right corner. As I said in the main text, John O'Connor told me that, prior to Yeats's poem, the island had been known as Rat Island and that it had been renamed to correspond with the poem. This particular island had been chosen for its convenience to the shore. I had no reason to dispute this version and it seemed to accord with the generally cynical attitude of the Irish to holidaying Yanks. Nowadays, in the digital age, it is very easy to check out this sort of stuff. So I did. The map above dates from around 1900 and shows clearly that the name of the island was Inisfree at that time. But Yeats's poem had already been written by then (c. 1890). Yeats says that as early as his teens he contemplated living on the island, and as can be seen from the map below, which dates from around 1840 - 25 years before his birth, the official name of the island was Inisfree. This map would have reflected the Irish language name of the island, but in anglicised form. The original is said to have been Inisfraoigh, or Heather Island. If I get time I will check it out in the OS fieldbooks. So where does that leave John's story. It doesn't necessarily contradict it entirely. Yeats is vindicated and we have the right island. But it is still possible that the island was known locally as Rat Island despite its official title. Benjamin Burrows, the Leicester composer who has put the poem to music, was certainly of this opinion. Innisfree is an islet in Lough Gill - the Lake of Brightness, a wide and beautiful water which lies among the mountains and has several large wooded islands. It is a small and very rocky islet, deep in heather, with a few bushes growing from the crevices. Innisfree is known locally as Rat Island, we regret to say. [See page 55 of Brian Blyth Daubmey's thesis. ]