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Sorley
McLean
 Sorley
Maclean died on 24th November 1996, aged eighty five. He was born
on 26th October 1911 in Oscaig, Isle of Raasay, the second son of
Malcolm Maclean, a tailor, and Christina Nicolson of Braes, Skye. Sorley
was educated in Raasay and Portree schools and at the University of
Edinburgh, where, in 1933, he graduated with first class honours in
English. After teacher training in Moray House College of Education he
became, in 1934, an assistant teacher of English in Portree Secondary
School (now Portree High School). In 1938 he took up an appointment in
Tobermory, Mull, and in 1939 moved to an equivalent post in Boroughmuir,
Edinburgh where, in 1947, he was promoted to the position of Principal
Teacher of English. In 1956 he became headmaster of Plockton Secondary
School where he remained until his retirement in 1972. In addition to
the normal demands of his office as headmaster, discharged with a
meticulous, unfailing sense of duty, and made more onerous through his
efforts to introduce a Gaelic learner's paper in the Highers, he took a
very active interest in promoting the game of shinty in the school. The
two years following his retirement were spent as Creative Writer in
Residence at Edinburgh University; afterwards from 1975 to 1976 he was
the Filidh at Sabhal Mor Ostaig in Skye.
He
had been called up for military service in 1940 and, in December 1941,
sent to Egypt on active service in the Signals Corps. There, eleven
months later, he was wounded and finally discharged from the army in
1943. The following year he met Renee Cameron, from Inverness and they
were married on 24th July 1946.
It was while
Sorley was at Edinburgh University that he started to write poetry in
his native Gaelic; his collection of poems, Dain do Eimhir agus Dain
Eile, was published in 1943. This collection had a tremendous and
far-reaching influence, speaking as it did with a contemporary Gaelic
voice. Maclean has been called the father of the Gaelic Renaissance. He showed the world that contemporary thoughts,
feelings and deeds could be expressed in one of the world’s most
ancient languages. For him the Gàidhealtachd was a microcosm of the
problems and injustices of the modern world.
Sorley
Maclean was the recipient of many honours, among them honorary
doctorates from Dundee, Edinburgh, the National Library of Ireland and
Glasgow, the MacVitie Prize for Literature and the Queen's Medal for
Poetry, Somhairle was made Freeman of Skye and Lochalsh in 1987.
The
following obituary extract was written by
Iain Crichton Smith:
"The
death of Sorley MacLean (Somhairle MacGill-Eain) will make a colossal
hole in the fabric of Scottish literature and not just in Gaelic
literature, though of course he was one of the very greatest of Gaelic
poets. Indeed, one might say that he was a poet who had attained
world-class stature. He read his work frequently in Scotland, England
and abroad and most especially in Ireland, where he was a cult figure.
Students would flock like pilgrims to his readings.
The
Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney has described hearing MacLean read for the
first time as mesmeric. There was, he said, a 'sense of bardic dignity
that was entirely without self-parade but was instead the effect of a
proud self-abnegation, as much a submission as a claim to heritage'.
And
indeed he was a wonderful reader of his work, sonorous, rhythmical,
strong- voiced. It is hard to think that we won't hear him again - for
instance, reading Hallaig, that great poem of desolation and
resurrection.
Sorley
MacLean was 85 when he died. He had been in hospital, but his friends
thought that he was suffering from a minor ailment only, and
consequently his death was a shock to them. For most of his life he had
been strong and sturdy and it seemed as if would go on forever.
He
was born in Raasay. He loved Skye and the Cuillins, about which he wrote
his great long but unfinished poem where the Cuillins became a symbol
for human endeavour. Above all, he loved his Gaelic culture and was
lucky that he came from a family which was steeped in song and story.
At
one time he wrote that he probably would rather have been a singer than
a poet and the great songs of the 16th and 17th century informed his
poetry with their magical music from anonymous bards. These were at the
heart of his poetry and gave them the tunefulness which is lacking for
the most part in modern poetry.
He
began writing poetry as a student in Edinburgh University, where he
gained a first-class honours degree in English. His very first poems
were, I believe, in English, but he soon realised that true authenticity
lay in Gaelic. By the end of the Thirties he was already an established
figure on the Scottish scene.
In
1940 he published Seventeen Poems for Sixpence with Robert Garioch. But
it was Dain Do Eimhir, a sequence of love poems, published in 1943, that
made his name and is to my mind the central and most brilliant section
of his work. I remember getting this book as a prize in the fifth year
in the Nicolson Institute, Stornoway, and realising that here was a new
voice unlike any that I had heard before. The book was illustrated with
Picasso-like drawings and this gave them a modern look.
Since
then I have never wavered in my belief that MacLean was one of the great
love poets of the world, like Catullus or Donne or Yeats or Sappho. What
attracts one in the poems is their music. But also much more than that.
One
of the things that made them seem modern to me were the references to
political figures such as Lenin, and to poets who had taken part in the
Spanish Civil War, including Auden and Spender. These and even Eliot he
dismissed as following 'a small dry way'.
The
Spanish War was central to him then. In it he saw the fascism which had
been seen in the Clearances. But at the same time as the war was taking
place he was in love, and his loved one and the Civil War became
entwined in an embrace which tested him to the limits.”
Dain
do Eimhir agus Dain Eile
(1943)
Reothairt
is Contraigh: Spring Tide and Neap Tide.
Selected Poems 1932-1972 (1977)
O
Choille gu Bearradh
(1989)
Ris
a’Bhruthaich
(1985) a collection of non-poetical writings
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