Áedán of the Gaels

I've started to learn Scottish Gaelic with Duolingo these past three months so was delighted to see Keith Coleman's new biography of the 'first' Gaelic speaking Scottish king, Áedán, for review on NetGalley. It seemed like a great opportunity to learn about the origins of Gaelic-speaking Scotland, complementing my language lessons, and I did indeed find myself able to translate, unaided, some of the descriptive names for various people and places Coleman mentions. There are, however, an awful lot of both people and places which briefly crop up without then ever being mentioned again and this made particularly the early chapters quite bewildering!

The main problem with a detailed biography of Àedàn is that very little is known for sure about the man himself or his exploits. Coleman has done a wonderful job of researching and collating myriad glimpses of him across various annals, records, epic poems and folklore. Putting all this together did allow me to gain a good sense of the king and the times in which he lived, but of necessity much of this book is educated guesswork. It did get frustrating to be repeatedly told how much we simply cannot know as the source material no longer - or perhaps never - existed. That said, I found Áedán of the Gaels to be a fascinating read and I am now keen to learn more of this hidden period of British history.