Sorley MacLean

He was the second of five sons born to Malcolm (1880–1951) and Christina MacLean (1886–1974).

The family owned a small croft and ran a tailoring business, but they later gave up the croft to move to a better house, which proved detrimental to their finances when the Great Depression took a high toll on the tailoring business.

His brothers were John (1910–1970), a schoolteacher and later rector of Oban High School, who was also a piper; Calum (1915–1960), a noted folklorist and ethnographer; and Alasdair (1918–1999) and Norman (c.1917–c.1980), who became general practitioners.

Sorley's two younger sisters, Isobel and Mary, were also schoolteachers.

His patronymic was Somhairle mac Chaluim 'ic Chaluim 'ic Iain 'ic Tharmaid 'ic Iain 'ic Tharmaid; he could not trace his genealogy with certainty to the eighth generation.

At home, he was steeped in Gaelic culture and beul-aithris (the oral tradition), especially old songs.

His mother, a Nicolson, had been raised near Portree, although her family was of Lochalsh origin; her family had been involved in Highland Land League activism for tenant rights.

His father had been raised on Raasay, but his family was originally from North Uist and, before that, probably Mull.

Both sides of the family had been evicted during the Highland Clearances, of which many people in the community still had a clear recollection.

Both his mother's and father's families contained individuals who were considered accomplished by their communities, whether through formal education or extensive knowledge of the oral tradition.

What MacLean learned of the history of the Gaels, especially of the Clearances, had a significant impact on his worldview and politics.

On his mother's side were three noteworthy singers, two pipers, and a village bard..

He said that 'The most intellectual of my relations was a sceptic and Socialist (my uncle in Jordanhill, Alex Nicolson)'.

Nicolson had been involved in the ILP and imprisoned as a conscientious objector in WWI and was also a noted historian and Gaelic scholar.

Sorley MacLean (Somhairle MacGill-Eain; 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.

He was raised in a strict Presbyterian family on the island of Raasay, immersed in Gaelic culture and literature from birth, but abandoned religion for socialism.

Sorley MacLean was born in Òsgaig, Raasay on 26 October 1911; Scottish Gaelic was his first language.

Before he went to school at the age of six, he spoke very little English.

Until her death in 1923, she lived with the family and taught MacLean many traditional songs from Kintail and Lochalsh, as well as Skye.

As a child, MacLean enjoyed fishing trips with his aunt Peigi, who taught him other songs.

Unlike other members of his family, MacLean could not sing, a fact that he connected with his impetus to write poetry.

MacLean was raised in the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, which he described as "the strictest of Calvinist fundamentalism".

Calvinism taught that God would save a small portion of humanity, the elect, while the vast majority were doomed by the sinfulness inherent in human nature.

Only 5% of the congregation took communion; the remainder were considered mere "adherents" who were probably destined for eternal torment in hell.

Free Presbyterians believed that the Free Church was too lenient, let alone the Church of Scotland.

They prohibited any form of amusement on the Sabbath, but had a rich tradition of unaccompanied psalm singing.

MacLean later said that he had abandoned religion for socialism at the age of twelve, as he refused to accept that a majority of human beings were consigned to eternal damnation.

In the late 1930s, he befriended many Scottish Renaissance figures, such as Hugh MacDiarmid and Douglas Young.

He was wounded three times while serving in the Royal Corps of Signals during the North African Campaign.

MacLean published little after the war, due to his perfectionism.

In 1941, he wrote that "perhaps my obsession with the cause of the unhappy, the unsuccessful, the oppressed comes from this."

The pessimism of the Calvinist tradition had a strong impact on his world-view, and he also retained "a puritanical contempt for mere worldly riches and power".

Later in life, he had a complicated view of the church and religion.

Although his most influential works, Dàin do Eimhir and An Cuilthionn, were published in 1943, MacLean did not become well known until the 1970s, when his works were published in English translation.

His later poem Hallaig, published 1954, achieved "cult status" outside Gaelic-speaking circles for its supernatural representation of a village depopulated in the Highland Clearances and came to represent all Scottish Gaelic poetry in the English-speaking imagination.

In 1956, he became head teacher at Plockton High School, where he advocated for the use of the Gaelic language in formal education.

In his poetry, MacLean juxtaposed traditional Gaelic elements with mainstream European elements, frequently comparing the Highland Clearances with contemporary events, especially the Spanish Civil War.

His work was a unique fusion of traditional and modern elements that has been credited with restoring Gaelic tradition to its proper place and reinvigorating and modernizing the Gaelic language.

Of especial note was MacLean's paternal grandmother, Mary Matheson, whose family had been evicted from Lochalsh in the 18th century.