About this book
A Celtic Psaltery by Alfred Perceval Graves summons the sacred voice of early Ireland, Scotland, and Wales through stirring English verse translations that read like a devotional songbook. Graves collects translations from Irish, Scotch Gaelic, and Welsh sources—renderings that range from pious hymns and monkish meditations to plaintive laments and folk-inspired songs—framing the spiritual life of the Celtic peoples from pagan twilight into the Christian dawn.
The poems explore themes of faith, exile, ritual, and communal grief: conversational wisdom between kings, the concise moral wisdom of the Irish Triads, hymns to saints such as Patrick, Columba, and Brigit, solitary hermit lays, charms, invocations, and powerful keening for the dead. Graves’s lyrical English preserves the archaic cadence and regional color while making these religious and serious poems accessible to modern listeners interested in medieval spirituality and folklore.
Ideal for lovers of Celtic poetry, historical and religious verse, and anyone drawn to lyrical translations and folk-song atmospheres, this audiobook offers a contemplative journey through early medieval spirituality and the resonant poetry of a vanished oral world.
