Raasay
The poet Sorley MacLean was born in Osgaig, a small crofting community on the west coast of the island; perhaps his most famous poem is about "Hallaig", an abandoned community on the east coast. MacLean's writings often combine an ancient traditional awareness, with a modernist political outlook, in which Raasay, and the areas adjacent to it are frequently referenced. But while MacLean's work dwells on the brutality of war, of the Highland Clearances and modern exploitation, he also writes about nature. Thus, although the Clearances leave an empty landscape populated only by the ghosts of those evicted or forced to emigrate, "Time, the deer, is in the Wood of Hallaig".
Scotty McLennan
Originally from Lake Forest, Illinois, McLennan attended the Hotchkiss School in Connecticut. In 1970, he received his BA degree (Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa) from Yale University, where he was a member of the Wolf's Head Secret Society. Along with former Yale Chaplain and McLennan's mentor William Sloane Coffin, McLennan is the real-life inspiration for the "Doonesbury" cartoon character Reverend Scot Sloan in his college roommate Garry Trudeau's Pulitzer Prize-winning comic strip, which also was adapted into a film and nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.
His senior year at Yale, McLennan was chosen to be a "Scholar of the House", whereby he was exempt from attending class in order to focus the year on scholarly research. For his graduate education, he earned both Master of Divinity and Juris Doctor degrees "cum laude" from Harvard Divinity School and Harvard Law School respectively in 1975.