Available now on Amazon Kindle, the stage adaptation of Euripides’ The Bacchae and Robert Burns’ Tam O’ Shanter.

CHORUS: We run with the god of laughter, and our song resounds to Bacchus!  Blest is the man who knows the mysteries the gods ordain, and sanctifies his life, Joins soul in mystic unity, And by due ritual made pure, Enters the ecstasy of mountain solitudes; Who observes the mystic rites made lawful by the Great Mother; Who crowns his head with ivy, And shakes aloft his wand in worship of Dionysus!

Oh Ayr, where ne’er a toun surpasses!  Fill soul and flesh with Bacchus’ mystic power.  Soon the whole land will dance when the god with ecstatic shout leads his companies out to the mountain’s height, swarming with riotous bands of Ayrshire women leaving their spinning and weaving stung with the maddening trance of Dionysus!

(Spinners/weavers in a trance join the Maenads)

O what delight is in the mountains!

There the celebrant flings herself on the ground surrendered, While the swift-footed company streams on; There she hunts for blood, and rapturously eats the raw flesh of the slaughtered goat, hurrying on to the heights of the Carrick Hills.  Possessed, ecstatic, she leads their happy cries; the earth flows with milk, flows with wine, flows with nectar of bees; the air is thick with the incense coming from Nirvana.