Dain do Eimhir agus Dain Eile, is considered a landmark in Gaelic poetry, as it enlarges on conventional subject matter, is innovative in its use of language, and draws on traditional Gaelic techniques and motifs in a masterly, avant-garde way. The illustrations by William Crosbie complement the Modernist tendencies of MacLean's verse. The younger Gaelic poet, Iain Crichton Smith, has written of the excitement he felt in 1945 when he received a copy of Dain do Eimer as a Gaelic prize from ‘an unusually enlightened Gaelic teacher . . . I was overwhelmed by the combination of music and imagery that I found in the book, and indeed it is the volume of poems to which I have returned most often, long after I sensed in Auden and Spender flaws which I did not find in MacLean . . . The volume seemed to compose a single poem, the record of a mind and heart engaged in work that was essential to them, and written too in varying forms which seemed suitable to the Twentieth-Century . . . Gaelic poetry in my experience was simply not like that.’
A notoriously difficult title to locate in decent condition and with any kind of dustjacket. This jacket has a protective cover to preserve it from any further damage.