as the continuation of the war his ancestors had waged against Oliver Cromwell, the Covenanters, and the Rump Parliament, Alasdair's book included English-Gaelic literary translations of three poems by Cavalier poet and Royalist General James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose, which expressed his loyalty to King Charles I and to the House of Stuart during the English Civil War. According to Hamish MacPherson, "One of the many contradictions about Alasdair was that he was a fine writer about love, but also wrote some very bawdy work – he wrote Praise of Morag about his wife which is full of sensual double entendres but also wrote Dispraise of Morag which is out-and-out obscene." According to an 2017 article by Peter Mackay, the two poems that Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair wrote about his wife are both based on the Great Highland bagpipe musical rhythms known as pibroch. In Praise of Morag the Bard likens his wife's breasts to geal criostal ("white crystal") and the lily of the valley, while comparing her skin to bog cotton and her kisses to cinnamon. In Dispraise of Morag, which was composed after his wife discovered her husband's infidelity, Morag NicDhòmhnaill was dubbed, A bhan-pheacach sin gun loinn, Làn de dh’fhòtas innt ("A graceless sinful girl, full of stinking pus"). According to John Lorne Campbell, two of the poems in Ais-Eridh na Sean Chánoin Albannaich, Òran air Sean aois ("A Song on Old Age") and Comh-radh, Mar go b' ann eider caraid agus namhaid an Uisgebheatha ("A Dialogue between a Friend and a Foe of Whisky"), were actually composed by Alasdair's close friend, the North Uist bard Iain Mac Fhearchair. The same collection also includes the poem Guidhe no Ùrnaigh an Ùghdair don Cheòlraidh ("The Author’s Petition or Prayer to the Muses"), which the Bard addresses to the Nine Muses and which, "reflects ruefully upon his own poetic powers." Another poem, Tineas na h-Urchaid ("The Venereal Disease") mocks the rotting flesh and the other symptoms of gonorrhea. It was composed during an outbreak of venereal disease among the population of Ardnamurchan and the Western Highlands. According to John Lorne Campbell, "The invective he heaped on the reigning House and its supporters gained him the enthusiastic approval of friends and the severe displeasure of the Government. MacDonald himself escaped prosecution, but the unsold copies of the book were seized and burned by the public hangman in Edinburgh market-place