Sorley MacLean
Sorley MacLean 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. 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 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. 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.
Biography
Early life
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. He was the second of five sons born to Malcolm and Christina MacLean. 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, a schoolteacher and later rector of Oban High School, who was also a piper; Calum, a noted folklorist and ethnographer; and Alasdair and Norman, 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, 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 '. Nicolson had been involved in the ILP and imprisoned as a conscientious objector in WWI and was also a noted historian and Gaelic scholar. Of especial note was MacLean's paternal grandmother, Mary Matheson, whose family had been evicted from Lochalsh in the 18th century. 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.
Calvinism
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 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 he criticized the Presbyterian church's suppression of Gaelic song, Scottish traditional music, and the oral tradition, as well as the negative effect of church teachings on some social groups, especially women, Professor Donald Meek wrote that at times MacLean seemed to articulate the ideas of liberation theology. John MacInnes has argued that his evangelical Presbyterian background was an important influence on his choice of Gaelic as the medium for his poetry and the manner of its expression. MacLean defended the Free Presbyterian Church against opponents who had little familiarity with it, once describing Free Presbyterian Church elders as "saintly, just saintly men". Sometimes he altered his poetry to avoid offending the religious members of his family. He also admired the linguistic and literary sophistication and creativity of Protestant sermons in Gaelic. The wide vocabulary, high register, and passion of these sermons had a significant impact on his poetic style.
1930s
He was educated at Raasay Primary School and Portree Secondary School. In 1929, he left home to attend the University of Edinburgh. For economic reasons, he chose to study English literature instead of Celtic studies, a decision he later regretted "because I was interested only in poetry and only in some poetry at that." He intensely disliked the head of the English department, Herbert Grierson, who favoured different poets than MacLean; MacLean also felt that Grierson imposed his aesthetic preferences on the department. MacLean's academic work has been described as merely "dutiful". While at Edinburgh, MacLean also took classes in the Celtic Department, then under William J. Watson. He was involved in literary circles, played for the university shinty team, and, like many other British intellectuals of the same era, was Pro-Soviet and, while never an official member, he was involved as a "fellow traveller" with the Communist Party of Great Britain. MacLean later described an occasion in which he joined a demonstration against Sir Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists. According to Celtic scholar Emma Dymock, MacLean's education at Edinburgh broadened his horizons and the city itself was significant in his life. While in Edinburgh, he also observed urban poverty, slums, and overcrowding, which was especially severe due to the continuing Great Depression. After his graduation in 1933 with a first-class degree, he remained in Edinburgh and studied at Moray House Teachers' Training College, where he met Hugh MacDiarmid.In 1934, he returned to Skye to teach English at Portree High School. After the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, he considered volunteering to fight in the International Brigades; according to his daughter, he would have gone if not for the poverty of his family and his own responsibilities as their provider. At the time, his mother was seriously ill and his father's business was failing. In January 1938, MacLean accepted a teaching position at Tobermory High School on the Isle of Mull, where he stayed until December. The year he spent on Mull had a profound effect on him, because Mull was still devastated from nineteenth-century Highland Clearances, during which MacLean's own ancestors had been evicted. MacLean later said, "I believe Mull had much to do with my poetry: its physical beauty, so different from Skye's, with the terrible imprint of the clearances on it, made it almost intolerable for a Gael." He believed that fascism was likely to emerge victorious in Europe, and was further dismayed by the continuing decline of the Gaelic language.
Between 1939 and 1941, he taught at Boroughmuir High School in Edinburgh, and in Hawick. During this period, he wrote most of the poetry that would become Dàin do Eimhir, including the epic An Cuilthionn. MacLean cultivated friendships with Scottish Renaissance poets, including MacDiarmid, Robert Garioch, Norman MacCaig, Douglas Young, and George Campbell Hay. MacLean, also a noted historian, published two influential papers on nineteenth-century Gaelic poetry in Transactions of the in 1938 and 1939, which challenged the Celtic Twilight view of Scottish Gaelic literature. MacLean accused the "Celtic Twilightists" of "attributing to Gaelic poetry the very opposite of every quality which it actually has", and stated that their claims only succeeded because the Twilightists catered solely to an English-speaking audience. He pointed out that the apparent sentimentality and sense of impotence within surviving poetry about the Highland Clearances may well have been due to the fact that Anglo-Scottish landlords would not have tolerated poetry that was openly critical of them. His use of Gaelic poetry as a potential source material for historical studies was also radically innovative at the time.