Included in this first volume of the trilogy Masterworks of the Classical Haida Mythtellers are the words of the blind poet Ghandl, the crippled master myth-spinner Skaay, the historian Kilxhawgins, and other Haida authors. The linguist and ethnographer John Swanton took dictation from the last great Haida-speaking storytellers, poets and historians in 1900–1901. Together they consciously created a great treasury of Haida oral literature in written form. In this first volume of his trilogy, Bringhurst brings these works to life in the English language and sets them in a context just as rich as the stories themselves one that reaches out to dozens of Native American oral literatures, and to mythtelling traditions around the world. This magnificent trilogy represents a decade of work from Robert Bringhurst, one of North America's most respected poets, linguists and cultural historians.