MacLean, Sorley (1911-1996), was a Scottish poet who wrote mainly in Gaelic. He produced work that was noted for its precise imagery, political and intellectual value, and lyrical and elegiac qualities.
Sorley MacLean served in the British Army during World War II (1939-1945) and was badly wounded at El Alamein in 1942. Much of his poetry reflects his war experiences.
MacLean’s earliest poems were in English and showed the influence of the American poets Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot. But from the early 1930’s onward, he wrote almost entirely in his first language, Gaelic. Following his war injuries in 1942, he contributed eight pieces to a collection of Gaelic verse titled Seventeen Poems for Sixpence. In 1943, he published a major collection titled Dàin do Eimhir (Poems to Eimhir), a work that was an important contribution to the revival of Gaelic literature. It consisted of an opening sequence of 48 love poems accompanied by a further 31 on various themes, including music, politics, and literature. The collection established MacLean as an influential figure in the preservation of Gaelic culture and traditions.
MacLean’s best-known single piece is the long poem Hallaig. This poem concerns the depopulation of a small town in northern Scotland during the Highland clearances of the late 1700’s. In their clearances, landowners brutally evicted many small tenant farmers from their homes and lands to make way for more profitable sheep grazing. Hallaig first appeared in a collection of MacLean’s old and new poetry titled Reothairt is Contràigh (Spring Tide and Neap Tide, 1977). MacLean’s other works included Ris a’ Bhruthaich (1985), a critical study of the Gaelic songs of the 1500’s and 1600’s, and O Choille gu Bearradh (From Wood to Ridge: Collected Poems in Gaelic and English, 1989).
Sorley MacLean (Somhairle MacGill-Eain in Gaelic) was born on Oct. 26, 1911, in Osgaig on the island of Raasay, northern Scotland. He was educated at the University of Edinburgh and became a schoolteacher in Plockton, in what was then the county of Ross-shire. He later served for a period as Writer-in-Residence at the University of Edinburgh and at the Gaelic College on Skye. He died on Nov. 24, 1996.
