Facts in The Song of Wandering Aengus

The adjective “dappled” means speckled, spotted, or marked with blotches of a different color. Gerard Manly Hopkins’s well-known poem Pied Beauty notably deals with the beauty of “dappled” imperfections. Dappled things are generally symbolic of innocence. This adjective casts the life the speaker imagines with this woman as Edenic and pure.

In ancient fishing practices, fishermen would use poisonous berries as bait that would cause the fish to go limp as soon as they had consumed the bait. This would make it easier for fishermen to reel in the fish as it would not struggle.