Tales Frae the Odyssey and Homer

TALES FRAE THE ODYSSEY O HOMER

The story of Odysseus's fantastic adventures has often been translated into English, but seldom if ever into guid braid Scots: this is the task superlatively performed by William Neill who presents eight episodes ranging from the supernatural violence of Scylla and Charybdis to the sweetness of the beautiful witch Circe.

When the victorious hero, Odysseus set out on his return journey from the Trojan war, he little thought that a chance encounter with a cannibal giant in which he put out the giant's single eye would earn him the hatred of the gods, but the giant's father, who happened to be Poseidon, god of the earthquake and the ocean, subjected Odysseus to vindictive persecution: Odysseus barely survived,
and it was ten years before he reached home.

The richness of the Scots language well matches the depth and nervous power of Homer's imagination, and this translation may stand equal to the work of Gavin Douglas and Robert Henryson in our own heroic past.

The text is beautifully illustrated by Barbara Robertson