A CELEBRATED 18th-century Gaelic poem, The Birlinn of Clanranald, can now be enjoyed in a vigorous new English version by Alan Riach. The poem, by Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair (Alexander MacDonald), describes the epic voyage of a galley from South Uist to Northern Ireland. Its Jacobite author had studied at Glasgow University. This brief extract suggests something of the urgency of the text (Kettillonia, £5).
THE STORM
(from The Birlinn of Clanranald)
The sea, boiling porridge, all muddy and white,
all streaked in grey and bloodily red,
beaded and veined with magenta and puce,
never a respite, never a truce,
colours of terror, razors of fright,
tatters and trails of the dying and dead. . .
The wind starts up again, blasting its best,
all sorts of trouble, straight out of the west,
falling around us, elements’ rubble.
Blind to the smart of it
spindrift and rain
constant assault
thundering onslaught
whipcracks of lightning
rain horizontal and vertical both
and diagonal always, cutting across,
this way and that, flashes of jagged-edge,
zigzags of cutlass-slash, slicing the dark,
sudden, the bright score
on the black board of night’s door -
All the way through –
At the edge of what’s life, all the crew -
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