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    Dream Angus: The Celtic God of Dreams
    Dream Angus: The Celtic God of Dreams
    Dream Angus: The Celtic God of Dreams
    Ebook120 pages2 hours

    Dream Angus: The Celtic God of Dreams

    By Alexander McCall Smith

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Short stories inspired by the ancient Celtic god of love and youth, from the New York Times–bestselling author of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.
     
    Angus is one of the earliest Celtic deities and one of the most cherished to this day. Like an even more handsome combination of Apollo and Eros, he is the god of love, youth, and beauty. Just the sight of him has made people fall in love, and he has the power to reveal a person’s true love in a dream, if asked politely.
     
    Alexander McCall Smith has turned his storytelling talents to crafting a collection of short fiction from this Irish mythology. Five contemporary fables of love lost and found unfold alongside Angus’s search for the beautiful Caér, the swan maiden he met in his dreams. McCall Smith mesmerizingly unites reality and dreams, today and the ancient past, leaving the reader to wonder: what is life but the pursuit of dreams?
     
    “Smith fluidly weaves in contemporary vignettes of the dream god’s benevolent influence, touching the lives of honeymooners on a windswept northern island; of a teenage boy sent away to boarding school in Scotland who tricks his mother into revealing who his true father is; and of a Toronto woman bereft at the discovery that her husband is having an affair. Angus, who presides over love and youth is also, it turns out, kindly to pigs. He is nicely reimagined in this spare, polished work.” —Publishers Weekly
     
    “This slim, elegant volume is further evidence of [Smith’s] consummate ability to blend wit, wisdom, and heart.” —Booklist (starred review)
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateJan 5, 2012
    ISBN9780802194220
    Dream Angus: The Celtic God of Dreams
    Author

    Alexander McCall Smith

    Alexander McCall Smith is the author of the award-winning series The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency, and he now devotes his time to the writing of fiction, including the 44 Scotland Street and the Isabel Dalhousie series. He is the author of over eighty books on a wide array of subjects, and his work has been translated into forty-six languages. Before becoming a full-time writer he was for many years Professor of Medical Law at Edinburgh.

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    Reviews for Dream Angus

    3.5/5

    178 ratings16 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Dream Angus by Alexander McCall Smith is one of the books of the Canongate Myths. I’ve only read one other book in the series, The Penelopiad, by Margaret Atwood, and I truly loved it. I enjoyed this one as well, which is a retelling of the myth of the Celtic god of dreams and love. The book starts out with the tales of how Angus came into being and grew up, and then it has separate stories, alternating between modern and ancient times, of Angus and his doings. One of the stories seemed a bit harsh, but in most of them Angus was a giver of good dreams, enabling people (and sometimes animals) to come to peace with their situations. I really enjoy Alexander McCall Smith’s writing style and I love myths, so I was very happy to read this book. Since both of the books I’ve read in this series were very enjoyable, I may branch out into the other installments as well.
    • 2/5
      A sort-of retelling of the myth of Angus, Celtic god of dreams and youth and love. The chapters alternate between the story of Angus's life and more modern vignettes that somehow incorporate Angus in various forms. Though Angus is supposedly a god of love, all the vignettes were rather sad: love lost, doubt, infidelity. I felt very disconnected from the whole thing, really. The parts about Angus's life came across more like someone was describing the myth to me, while the other stories were so vague (and dreamy, if you'll forgive me) that I never quite got into them. In short, this book was decent, but did not convince me to seek out other books by this same author.
    • 4/5
      Dream Angus is the fifth in Canongate’s Myths series, where leading contemporary authors take a variety of mythological stories, and retell them however they choose.McAll Smith chooses the myth of Angus, a Celtic god of dream and love, of youth and beauty, a trickster with a benevolent heart, who brings love to others, but is fated himself to only ever love one woman, Caer, whom he has seen only in his own dreams.McAll Smith takes a two-pronged approach, alternating between chapters retelling the basic story of Angus with five fables set in modern times, each in their own way touching on an aspect of Angus’ life and story. Angus may – or may not – be seen in these chapters, but his touch is in them all. The effect works well, and while it’s less ambitious than some of the books in this series so far, it’s a gently done reworking that is full of McAll Smith’s typical charm.I have to confess I’d grown a little weary of his style, and have skipped his last few books, but this reminded me why I liked him in the first place. A good addition to the Canongate Myths, which remains a series well worth following.
    • 4/5
      Well, I did read [Dream Angus]. It was in the "ok" area for me until I got to the last chapter. This book has Smith interspersing the mythic story of Angus wih modern tales of people affected by dreams.This tenth chapter I found very affecting with a lucid dream that resolves the mess a couple have gotten into. It brought up memories of dreams I've had and dreamwork I've done.I might mention that dreams in this book function as an agent of change and not as a pyschological analysis of your life already lived, particularly the detritus from the previous day.
    • 4/5
      A lovely instalment in the Canongate Myths Series. To be honest I don’t know enough about the Angus Myth to know how McCall Smith interpreted it, but I loved the juxtaposition between Angus's storty and the 'real world'. Somehow I found the story of Pig 20 really really moving. Lovely.
    • 4/5
      A brief retelling of the Celtic myth of the Dream Angus and a series of related short stories set in the modern world. I believe I'm too much of a realist to appreciate the mythology, but the stories had a pleasantly dreamy, mystical quality that I enjoyed.
    • 5/5
      A re-telling of Angus, a Celtic figure who was the son of the Dagda and a water spirit Boann. Angus comes in the night and bestows dreams and this tale is a mixture of the original myth and stories of people set in our current time. Boann is married to another man when Dagda sees her and desires her. After she becomes pregnant he leaves her but returns to take Angus when he is born against her wishes. When he grows into manhood he tricks his father out of his Kingdom and later falls in love with a woman he sees in a dream. She is someon unattainable who turns in to a swan for alternate years. The ending of Angus' story is beautiful and has the two finding happiness together.The tale is interspersed with fragments and dreams of more modern people. The final story was my favourite and is of a woman whose husband has been having an affair. She leaves him and enters therapy. One night she dreams that she stands up to her husband who then reaches out to her saying he had long hoped she would come but was too afraid to ask her. Soon after she drives past their old house and he comes over to her and reaches for her through the car window. It was a beautiful tale and a lovely way to finish this enchanting short novel.This is one of my favourites so far in the series and I am definitely interested in reading more of McCall Smith's writing. Recommended for anyone with a passion for mythology or a damn good story.
    • 4/5
      [Dream Angus] by Alexander McCall Smith is his addition to the myth stories retold by modern authors. Angus is a Celtic God who brings dreams which are prophetic, and who is an active character in these stories. They are all bound together because of Angus, and some are set in ancient times and some are modern. I enjoy McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency stories, but I liked his writing better in this book. It’s sharper, deeper, and more interesting.
    • 3/5
      Flitting in amongst the lives and dreams of modern day Irish folk, Angus, deliverer of dreams and igniter of passions and love, takes on the persona of a therapist, a tow-headed and simple-minded youth, or the ancient regalia as the son of the Dagda, the highest of the Irish deities. McCall Smith crafts a series of delightful short stories, rife with the connections between people and the failings therein. Whether describing the beautiful beginnings of a newlywed couple or the wrenching betrayal of a damaged marriage, he tells an engaging story. Yet unlike precursors in the Canongate Myth series, the connections to the myth that beget this novel seems to hold a tenuous thread to the modernity of mythic experience that Smith never truly expounds upon. The mythic story arc, encasing the modern short stories, of the Dream Angus could be excised and leave a fine collection of short stories. I felt disappointed that the first Celtic exploration did not delve as deeply nor as soundly as the Greek tales. The myth was relegated to the hastily surmised binding offering a tenative connective tissue to the short stories, rather than the wellspring from whence they sprung. The prose is lovely and the characters have feeling to them, but I engaged this novel hoping for the resonance of mythos to carry me to the ineffable realms of imagination and creativity, but alas the flight stopped lightly at a pleasurable yarn to wile away an afternoon, leaving me grasping at a loose thread yet to be woven into cloth.
    • 4/5
      A very interesting idea for a series, this. Retell the classic myths of the world from a new perspective, only a serious point is to be made: Myths are the stories of our collective unconscious, and can always bear updating.It works out well in Dream Angus in large part because McCall Smith is Dream Angus's little brother. He creates magical invisible kingdoms of thought and convinces the millions that they're real and they're worth visiting time after time after time (Isabel Dalhousie novels, No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency).The Irish myth of Dream Angus, the god of love, dreams, and youth, is "...a cloud based upon a shadow based upon the movement of the breeze" (p xiv, hardcover edition). (Quite a trinity to get stuck with! Obstreperous, illogical, wilful things to be god of, all three.) McCall Smith gently deflects the breeze in his desired directions, and weaves the mythic base into more modern stories of Angus's doin's in this world. I don't think he did a brilliant job of this, but it's a tough technical challenge to tackle. I rated the book down a whole star for its heterosexism. It's explicit, and it rankled me.But the lushness of Angus and of his beautiful self-aware selflessness in doing all the things he does for humanity...! Curmudges there a crusty old crab so dead to wonder and passion and love as to find this slightly arch, somewhat precious conceit anything other than glisteningly gorgeous?Gods, I hope not. And I hope not to meet him/er, either. Go on, suspend disbelief and read this book. Soon. You'll be glad you took this vacation in the land of Celtic myth.
    • 4/5
      This book in the Canongate Myths series is about the celtic god of dreams, Angus. The short book comprises of tales about Angus' birth, childhood and life, mixed in with stories where dreams play an important role, and the god of dreams can be glimpsed. An enjoyable read, although I hadn't heard of Angus before so was unfamiliar with the original myths.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      "In my experience, dreams are unreliable, and the lovers whom people see in their dreams, well... Put it this way, I'm not exactly convinced. Far from it." - Thoughts on Dream Angus by Alexander McCall SmithSigh. I hate it when a book disappoints me, especially when I've convinced myself early on that I will love, oh I will love it so, so much. Alexander McCall Smith's Dream Angus is my fourth Canongate Myth, and even before I've started reading the series, just when I was learning about them and reading the synopsis of each title, I was convinced that this one - this book about dreams and love and all its different manifestations - would be the stand-out, that one orange among the series of apples*.Darn it, Alexander McCall Smith. Darn it.Something was amiss. No, some things were amiss. I felt it the moment I held the book: it was light, too light, like it was lacking weight and substance and something else that mattered. I told myself, no, it's purposely light, because it's a book about Angus, the Celtic mythology's giver of dreams and a figure of youth and love, and it is only right that this re-telling should seem just as unburdened. And so I read, and I read some more, and no matter how much I tried it didn't feel right at all.I tried to love you, Dream Angus, and when that didn't work I tried to at least like you. And maybe I did, a little bit, but once disappointed, you can never go back.You were, for lack of a better term, just meh.But there were redeeming qualities, the stuff that made me keep on reading. The five different stories (were they related, written without a sense of time?), despite leaving me wanting, were good. Angus was in each one of them, in various forms - an unwelcomed visitor, a shrink, and something else; my favorite was the uncle who threatened his nephew with nightmares (and maybe I liked it because it was different). There were such beautiful phrases and lines: "he drowned in the sky" and "but the gesture never came," "And he wanted to disbelieve what he had just heard because so few words could not end a world." Dream Angus was written - I hope you can forgive me if it sounds too schmaltzy- so dreamily.And maybe that is why. It felt written in haste, in a haze, at times lucid and at times not. To put simply: "Sometimes the reality is not quite so appealing as the vision, distinctly so, but let's not be pessimistic."PS. "Love and its disappointments were the bread and butter of people like him." Yes, there was love, plenty of it, and it all ended in disappointment. I'm so sad. So very, very sad. Sigh.*I like apples, but I love me an orange. My analogy sucks. I'm sorry.Originally posted here.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Why did I read it? I like the idea of modern takes on older myths and this was available as part of my subscription to an audio book site.Synopsis: It starts with the old celtic myth of Angust, starting with his parents and his birth, interspersed with Alexander McCall Smith's stories based on the myth.What did I like? I liked how it weaved back and forth from the time of myth to more modern life stories and how these new stories reflected the life of the Angus of old. Somehow, they enhanced the old tale, but I am not sure how and I feel this is a deeply personal feeling. Dreams feature in every tale and not all of them are happy ones, yet the book doesn't really have the melancholy atmosphere of the celtic storytelling tradition; at least not for me.I felt the narrator of this book, Michael Page, captured its essence perfectly, being neither intrusive nor losing my attention at any point. A perfectly balanced performance for my commute to and from work.What didn't I like? Way too short for me. This book was over in two days of commuting and this was disappointing as I wanted more.Would I recommend it? Heartily to anyone who likes good storytelling and has a fondness for the older myths.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      I just didn't like this.

      I have a sneaking suspicion that McCall-Smith, just like James Doss, likes the sound of his own writer's voice, and thusly writes for the pure pleasure of hearing his own words.

      I just didn't understand the point of the stories, they were short and left me wanting so very much more. I felt they were all very underdeveloped. I also think that the stories are inter-connected with each other, but mostly I fail to see the connection with the exception of the Boys whose fathers were really not their fathers.

      So I rate this "Eh!"

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      am not all that familiar with Celtic mythology and had actually never heard of Angus (god of dreams and love), so I was a bit worried that some bits of the story would be lost on me...but I need not have worried. Dream Angus is a quite a wonderful retelling of this myth. After doing a bit of research, I find that McCall Smith has kept the bones from source material and dressed them up in contemporary garments and he has, I believe, done it a very likeable and compelling way! Like a couple of others in this series, we are presented with vignettes which weave back and forth between ancient mythological settings and more contemporary ones; giving us the opportunity to hear Angus tale from birth to finding his own true love while also being given a glimpse of how he is still relevant in the modern world...for Angus, it seems still bestows upon us his precious and wonderful dreams! We find that Angus touches the lives of someone in each little story, and each is compelling and beautiful in its own way. I was particularly amused to see Angus cast as a psychotherapist using lucid dreaming to help his patients...a nice little twist! I would definitely recommend this as a light, but amusing retelling of Angus, Celtic God of Dreams, I don't think you'll be disappointed! I'm certainly glad to have read this and I'm looking forward to seeing more in this series!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      The Celtic Dream god gets a modern makeover. If you are not careful, you'll miss the subtle connections.

      1 person found this helpful

    Book preview

    Dream Angus - Alexander McCall Smith

    DREAM ANGUS

    Also by Alexander McCall Smith

    No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Series

    The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency

    Tears of the Giraffe

    Morality for Beautiful Girls

    The Kalahari Typing School for Men

    The Full Cupboard of Life

    In the Company of Cheerful Ladies

    Blue Shoes and Happiness

    Professor Dr Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld Series

    At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances

    The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs

    Portuguese Irregular Verbs

    Sunday Philosophy Club Series

    The Sunday Philosophy Club

    Friends, Lovers, Chocolate

    The Right Attitude to Rain

    44 Scotland Street Series

    44 Scotland Street

    Espresso Tales

    Love Over Scotland

    Short Stories

    Heavenly Date: And Other Flirtations

    The Girl Who Married a Lion

    The Baboons Who Went This Way And That

    Figure

    DREAM ANGUS

    The Celtic God of Dreams

    Alexander McCall Smith

    Figure

    CANONGATE

    Edinburgh · New York · Melbourne

    First published in Great Britain in 2006 by

    Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street,

    Edinburgh EH1 1TE

    1

    Copyright © Alexander McCall Smith, 2006

    The moral right of the author has been asserted

    British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

    A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library

    ISBN-13: 9780802194220

    Designed by Pentagram

    Typeset in Van Dijck by

    Palimpsest Book Production Ltd, Grangemouth, Stirlingshire

    Printed and bound by Legoprint, s.p.a, Italy

    www.canongate.net

    Myths are universal and timeless stories that reflect and shape our lives - they explore our desires, our fears, our longings, and provide narratives that remind us what it means to be human. The Myths series brings together some of the world’s finest writers, each of whom has retold a myth in a contemporary and memorable way. Authors in the series include: Chinua Achebe, Margaret Atwood, Karen Armstrong, AS Byatt, David Grossman, Milton Hatoum, Natsuo Kirino, Alexander McCall Smith, Tomás Eloy Martínez, Victor Pelevin, Ali Smith, Donna Tartt, Su Tong, Dubravka Ugresic, Salley Vickers and Jeanette Winterson.

    For Malcolm and Nicola Wood

    CONTENTS

    Introduction

    This story is a retelling of the myth of Angus, a popular and attractive figure of the Celtic mythology of Ireland and Scotland. Angus is a giver of dreams, an Eros, a figure of youth. He comes down to us from Irish mythology, but he is encountered, too, in Celtic Scotland. He is a benign figure - handsome and playful - who in modern times has inspired not only the poem of W.B. Yeats, ‘The Song of Wandering Aengus’, but also the lilting Scottish lullaby, ‘Dream Angus’.

    In this version of the story of Angus, although I have taken some liberties with the original, I have tried to maintain the central features of Angus’s life as these are revealed to us in the Irish mythological sources. These sources, though, do not provide much detail, and so I have imagined what his mother, Boann, might be like; I have interpreted the character of his father, the Dagda, in a particular way and have deprived him of the definite article that precedes his name; I have assumed that Bodb was rather overbearing. Purists may object to this, but myths live, and are there to be played with. At the same time, it is important to remind readers of the fact that if they want the medieval versions, unsullied by twenty-first-century interpolation, they still exist, and are accessible. We must bear in mind, however, that those earlier texts are themselves reworked versions of things passed from mouth to mouth, embroidered and mixed up in the process. Myth is a cloud based upon a shadow based upon the movement of the breeze.

    Celtic mythology is a rich and entrancing world, peopled by both mortals and gods. It embraces the notion of parallel universes, the real world and the otherworld. There are signs of the otherworld in the real world - mounds, hills and loughs - and the location of mythical places is frequently tied to real geographical features. It is no respecter of chronology, though, even if the later Irish heroic tales claim to have happened at a particular time in history. Angus belongs to the early body of stories - stories of a time beyond concrete memory.

    ***

    In retelling the story of Angus, I have brought him into the modern world in a series of connected stories which for the most part take place in modern Scotland. The part played by Angus, or the Angus figure, in each of these, may be elusive, but such a figure is present in each of them. Unlike some mythical figures, Angus does no particular moral or didactic work: he is really about dreams and about love - two things that have always had their mysteries for people. Angus puts us in touch with our dreams - those entities which Auden described so beautifully in his Freud poem as the creatures of the night that are waiting for us, that need our recognition. But Angus does more than that: he represents youth and the intense, passionate love that we might experience when we are young but which we might still try to remember as age creeps up. Age and experience might make us sombre and cautious, but there is always an Angus within us - Angus the dreamer.

    Alexander McCall Smith, 2006

    1

    There was water

    This happened in Ireland, but the memory of it is in Scotland too. The precise location of things was not so important then, as there was just the land and the sea between them, and people came and went between the lands, and they were brothers and sisters. The land itself was beautiful, with hills that ran down to the sea, and there were cold green waves that broke on the rocks that marked the edge of the land. There were islands, too, with stretches of white sand, and behind the white sand there was the machair, which was made up of meadows on which grew yellow and blue flowers, tiny flowers.

    The gods lived everywhere then, and they moved among the people. But there were some gods who had their own place, and they were sometimes very powerful, as Dagda was. He was one of the great gods, and his people lived on islands at the very edge of the world, where there is just the blue of the sea and the west beyond the blue. They came to Ireland on a cloud, and lived there. Dagda was one of them, the good one, and he had great power, with his cauldron in which there was limitless food, and his great club, with which he could slay many men with a single blow. But he was often kind to men, and he could bring them back to life with the other end of the club. He also had fecund fruit trees which never stopped bearing fruit, and two remarkable pigs, one of which was always being cooked while the other was always growing.

    There are many stories of Dagda and his doings. This one is about how he came to father a boy called Angus, and how Angus delighted all who came across him. In many ways, this was Dagda’s greatest achievement, that he gave us this fine boy, who brought dreams to people, and who was loved by birds and people equally and who still is. For Dream Angus still comes at night and gives you dreams. You do not see him do this, but you may spot him skipping across the heather, his bag of dreams by his side, and the sight of him, just the sight, may be enough to make you fall in love. For he is also a dispenser of love, an Eros.

    How was it that Dagda, a great and powerful god, a leader of warriors, should have had such a son? One might have thought, surely, that a god like that would have a son who was skilled in military matters, rather than a dreamer who fell in love and who was a charmer of birds. For an explanation of the gentleness of Angus, we must turn to his mother. She was a water spirit called Boann. Water spirits are gentle; their sons are handsome and have a sense of fun; they sparkle and dart about, just like water, which is the most playful of the elements.

    Boann lived in a river. This was one of those rivers which was both great and small. There were places where its bed grew quite broad, and at such places one might walk across the river without getting even one’s ankles wet. At other places there were pools, deep and dark, with water the colour of peat, and in these pools swam trout who lived

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