Sorley MacLean
Sorley MacLean (; 26 October 1911 – 24 November 1996) was a Scottish Gaelic poet, described by the Scottish Poetry Library as "one of the major Scottish poets of the modern era" because of his "mastery of his chosen medium and his engagement with the European poetic tradition and European politics". Nobel Prize Laureate Seamus Heaney credited MacLean with saving Scottish Gaelic poetry.
Sorley MacLean
In the English-speaking world, MacLean's best-known poem is "Hallaig", a meditation on a Raasay village which had been cleared of its inhabitants. Raasay was cleared between 1852 and 1854; most of its inhabitants were forced to emigrate. Many of MacLean's relatives were affected, and Hallaig was one of the villages to be depopulated. The poem was written a century later, during MacLean's time in Edinburgh, and originally published in 1954 in the Gaelic-language magazine "Gairm". Beginning with the famous line, "Time, the deer, is in the wood of Hallaig", the poem imagines the village as it was before the Clearances, with the long-dead eternally walking through the trees. It is also filled with local names of individuals and places, which have deeper meanings to those intimately familiar with Raasay oral tradition. Unlike most of MacLean's output, "Hallaig" has no overt political references, and never directly mentions eviction or clearance. For this reason, it was seen as politically "safer" than others of MacLean's poems. Translated and promoted by Irish Nobel Prize Laureate Seamus Heaney, "Hallaig" achieved "cult status" and came to symbolize Scottish Gaelic poetry in the English-speaking imagination.