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.
Calum Maclean
On 17 August 1960 Calum Maclean died of cancer at the age of 44 in the Sacred Heart Hospital, Daliburgh, South Uist, Scotland. He was to have received, in September of that year, from the St. Francis Xavier University at Antigonish, Nova Scotia – an institution with very strong Highland connections – the degree of LL.D., honoris causa, for recognition of his work for the preservation of Gaelic oral tradition. It was a fitting honour for a scholar – the one word that he pleaded not to have marked on his gravestone – who had spent so many long hours collecting in the field. He was buried in Hallan Cemetery, South Uist, an island that not only claimed him but one that he claimed to be his own. His brother, Sorley MacLean, wrote a moving elegy typifying for many the great loss felt at his death:
Tha iomadh duine bochd an Albainn
dhan tug thu togail agus cliù;
’s ann a thog thu ’n t-iriosail
a chuir ar linn air chùl.
Thug iad dhutsa barrachd
na bheireadh iad do chàch
on thug thu dhaibh an dùrachd
bu ghrìosaich fo do bhàigh.
Mhothaich iadsan an dealas
a bha socair na do dhòigh,
thuig iad doimhne throm do dhaondachd
nuair b’aotroime do spòrs.