MacLean, Sorley

(1911-1996)

   "Somhairle MacGill-Eain" was born at Osgaig on the island of Raasay in the Inner Hebrides into a family and community immersed in Gaelic language and culture, particularly song. Educated at Portree, Skye, he graduated with a first class honors in English from Edinburgh University in 1933. During World War II he was seriously wounded at El Alamein. He spent his working life as a schoolteacher, and for many years was head teacher at Plockton High School, Wester Ross. He was a founder of the School of Scottish Studies in Edinburgh and received the Queen's Gold Medal for po246 etry in 1990. He died at Raigmore Hospital, Inverness. Gaelic was his medium, although he translated many of his poems into English. The poem "Hallaig" is one of the lyrics included in Peter Maxwell-Davies' opera The Jacobite Rising (1997). From 1940 onward he published collections of his own and in collaboration with other Gaelic-speaking poets. A bilingual edition of his Collected Poems appeared in 1989. Some of his poems: "A Highland Woman," "Calvary," "Kinloch Ainort," "McIntyre and Ross," "My Een Are Nae on Calvary," "The Clan MacLean," "The Cry of Europe," "The Cuillin."

   Sources: Antholog y of Magazine Verse and Yearbook of American Poetry. Alan F. Pater, ed. Monitor Book Company, 1980. Biography of Sorley Maclean: BBC -Writing Scotland - Scotland's Languages (http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/arts/writingscotland/learning_journeys/scot lands_languages/sorley_maclean/). Clan MacLean Articles, In Memory of Sorley, A Tribute, by Mary McLean Hoff. (http://www.maclean.org/clan-maclean-articles/clanmaclean-tribute-to-sorley.htm). Poems of the Scottish Hills: An Antholog y. Hamish Brown, ed. Aberdeen University Press, 1982. Portraits of Poets. Sebastian Barker, ed. Carcanet, 1986. Sorley MacLean-An Obituary. The Capital Scot (http://thecapitalscot.com/pastfeatures/smaclean.html). The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Faber Book of War Poetry. Kenneth Baker, ed. Faber and Faber, 1996. The Harvill Book of Twentieth-Century Poetry in English. Michael Schmidt, ed. The Harvill Press, 1999. The New Penguin Book of Scottish Verse. Robert Crawford and Mick Imlah, eds. Penguin Books, 2000. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia).