Duncan Ban MacIntyre’s long poem in praise of the great mountain of Ben Dorain in Argyll, is one of the finest achievements of Gaelic literature, a rich, rhythmic, unsentimental appreciation of wild landscape, its deer and the hunter’s relationship with both. Composed on the model of pibroch (the great musical form of the bagpipes) it was first published as part of Duncan Ban’s collected poems in 1768, having been transcribed from the poet’s own recitation, since he was himself illiterate and had committed all of his verse to memory. In this new edition of the work, the original Gaelic is reproduced along with a sparkling new version in English by Alan Riach, poet and professor of Scottish Literature at Glasgow University.
“Alan Riach delights in the polysyllabic rhythms of English to capture the assonantal pibroch-energy of Moladh Beinn Dóbhrain, and you can almost hear the rattle of fingers on the chanter in this wonderfully lively version of Duncan Ban’s masterpiece.”
– Roderick Watson
“Riach’s invigorating response is informed by a richness of sound and imagery that goes beyond translation and searches deep into the heart of MacIntyre’s Gaelic masterpiece.”
– John Purser
“Alan Riach brings Duncan Ban fully into the 21st century: the sustained richness of language, rhythmic drive and flow of thought mirror the original in such a way that non-Gaels are allowed unusual access to the Real MacIntyre, while demonstrating that he is as much of our time as of his own.”
– Aonghas MacNeacail
 | Alan RiachAlan Riach holds the Chair of Scottish Literature at Glasgow University. His fifth book of poems, Homecoming (2009), follows Clearances (2001), First & Last Songs (1995), An Open Return (1991) and This Folding Map (1990). He is the author of Hugh MacDiarmid’s Epic Poetry (1991), The Poetry of Hugh MacDiarmid (1999) and Representing Scotland in Literature, Popular Culture and Iconography (2005), and the general editor of the Collected Works of Hugh MacDiarmid. He is the co-author with Alexander Moffat of Arts of Resistance: Poets, Portraits and Landscapes of Modern Scotland (2008), described by the Times Literary Supplement as “a landmark book”, and Arts of Independence: the Cultural Argument and Why It Matters Most (2014). He is the editor of The Hunterian Poems: Poems to Paintings from The Hunterian Collection at the University of Glasgow (2015) and The International Companion to Edwin Morgan (2015) and the co-editor of The Radical Imagination: Lectures and Talks by Wilson Harris (1992), Scotlands: Poets and the Nation (2004) and The Edinburgh Companion to Twentieth-Century Scottish Literature (2009). Born in Scotland, in Airdrie, Lanarkshire, in 1957, he went to school in Kent and completed his first degree in English Literature at Cambridge University and his PhD in Scottish Literature at Glasgow University, before working at the University of Waikato in New Zealand, 1986-2000. Since 1 January 2001, he has been working in Scotland. |
