Aeáolus!

When Donald Macintyre won the Bardic Crown at the National Mod in Glasgow in 1938 with Aeolus agus am Balg, one adjudicator hailed it as 'the Gaelic poem of the century'.

Macintyre saw a great storm of 1921 as a conspiracy of pagan gods to destroy Scotland.

Given the politics of the time, the poem is also an allegory of the conspiracy of Fascist leaders to take over the world.

The gods' final retreat before a greater God was a message of hope for the world.

This new parallel translation gives readers the opportunity to form their own views on that adjudicator's verdict. Because sound was a vital ingredient of poetry made for recitation, no judgement can be made without listening to the enclosed CD, which reveals the rich river of rhythm and melody which hallmarked Macintyre's mastery of classic metres. As an epic traditional ballad dealing with 20th century events in allegorical form, Aeolus can surely claim to be unique in the Gaelic corpus. This edition will delight the fluent speaker and prove invaluable to the student but it is not necessary to have any knowledge of the language to respond to the drama and melodic rhythm of the poetry.