Sorley MacLean, born on the Isle of Raasay in 1911 into a family tradition still rich in the Gaelic cultural experience, particularly in song, was a highly influential figure at the heart of the Gaelic renaissance in Scotland, and became instrumental in preserving the teaching of Gaelic in Scottish schools.

Having studied English at the University of Edinburgh in the 1930s, he fought in North Africa during the Second World War. He later took up teaching as a career, and was for many years head teacher at Plockton High School. His work remained little known outside Gaelic-speaking circles until the 1970s, when an appearance at the Cambridge Poetry Festival brought him to the attention of a much wider public.

Of his readings, Seamus Heaney has written, 'MacLean's voice had a certain bardic weirdness that sounded both stricken and enraptured'. Never a 'full-time' poet, MacLean once described his way of writing: 'I brood over something until a rhythm comes, as a more or less tight rope to cross the abyss of silence'.

He received the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1990, and died in 1996.

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Related links

›Sorley MacLean Online

›Sorley Maclean and Poets' Pub

›www.nls.uk/writestuff/heads/wee-maclean.html
Photo of MacLean, short extract from 'The Cuillin', brief biography