Editing Sorley MacLean (section)

===Recognition===
{{further|Hallaig}}
{{quote box|align=right|width=27em|How many people know that the best living Scottish poet, by a whole head and shoulders, after the two major figures in this century, [[Edwin Muir]] and [[Hugh MacDiarmid]], is not any of the English writing poets, but Sorley MacLean? Yet he alone takes his place easily and indubitably beside these two major poets: and he writes only in Gaelic [...] That Sorley MacLean is a great poet in the Gaelic tradition, a man not merely for time, but for eternity, I have no doubt whatever.|source=[[Tom Scott (poet)|Tom Scott]], 1970{{r|Hendry|p=9}}}}
Although his poetry had a profound impact on the Gaelic-speaking world, it was not until the 1970s and 1980s that MacLean's work became accessible in English translation.<ref name="larach"/>{{r|Birt|p=193}} His poetry was not very accessible to Gaelic speakers either, since ''Dàin do Eimhir'' was not reprinted.{{r|MC|p=2}}{{r|Hendry|p=9}} To English-speakers, MacLean remained virtually unknown until 1970, when issue 34 of ''[[Lines Review]]'' was dedicated to his work and some of his poems were reproduced in the anthology ''Four Points of the Saltire.'' In the preface to the collection, [[Tom Scott (poet)|Tom Scott]] forcefully argued for the merit of MacLean's poetry.{{r|two}}{{r|Hendry|p=9}} Iain Crichton Smith published an English translation of ''Dàin do Eimhir'' in 1971.{{efn-lr|This edition only contained 36 of the poems in the Eimhir sequence,<ref name="publications" /> and did not reproduce the Gaelic originals.{{r|thesis|p=62}}}} MacLean was part of the delegation that represented Scotland at the first [[Cambridge Poetry Festival]] in 1975, establishing his reputation in England.{{r|obit|hobit}} He was one of five Gaelic poets to be anthologized in the influential 1976 collection ''Nua-Bhàrdachd Ghàidhlig / Modern Scottish Gaelic Poems'' with [[self-translation|verse translations by the authors]]. MacLean's verse translations were also included in later publications.{{r|thesis|pp=60, 64, 73}}

In 1977, [[Canongate Books]] published ''Reothairt is Contraigh: Taghadh de Dhàin 1932–72'' ({{langx|en|Spring tide and Neap tide: Selected Poems 1932–72}}). MacLean changed the ordering of the ''Dàin do Eimhir'' sequence, altering many poems and omitting others. In the original version of ''An Cuilthionn'', MacLean had asked the [[Red Army]] to invade Scotland.<ref name=library/>{{efn-lr|"Có bheir faochadh dhan àmhghar<br />mur tig an t-Arm Dearg sa chàs seo?"<br />(Who will give respite to the agony<br />unless the [[Red Army]] comes in this extremity?)<ref name=library/>}} This passage was expunged, among other alterations and omissions that led the Scottish Poetry Library to describe the 1977 version as having been "[[bowdlerized]]". MacLean said that he would only consent to publishing the parts of his older work that he found "tolerable".<ref name=library/> The critical acclaim and fame that MacLean achieved was almost entirely from critics who did not understand his poetry in the original Gaelic.{{r|thesis|p=172}} In 1989, a further compilation of his poetry, ''O Choille gu Bearradh / From Wood to Ridge: Collected Poems in Gaelic and English'' won him lasting critical acclaim. Complete annotated editions of his work have since been published.<ref name=library/>

[[File:Site of the 'Clearance' village of Hallaig - geograph.org.uk - 388590.jpg|thumb|left|upright=1.2|Hallaig, [[Raasay]], made famous by MacLean's 1954 [[Hallaig|poem]]]]

From the early 1970s, MacLean was in demand internationally as a reader of his own poetry. He would start a reading of a poem by describing the images, then read the poem first in Gaelic and again in English, emphasizing that the translations were not to be read as poems in themselves.{{r|thesis|p=72}} His readings were described as deeply moving even by listeners who did not speak Gaelic;{{r|open|p=17}} according to [[Seamus Heaney]], "MacLean's voice had a certain bardic weirdness that sounded both stricken and enraptured".<ref name=Heaney/> Gaelic poet George Campbell Hay wrote in a review that MacLean "is gifted with what the Welsh call [[:wikt:hwyl|Hwyl]], the power of elevated declamation, and his declamation is full of feeling."{{r|displacement|p=1}} These readings helped establish his international reputation as a poet.{{r|open|p=30}} MacLean's poetry was also translated into [[German language|German]], and he was invited to poetry readings in Germany and Austria.{{r|thesis|p=255}}

In the English-speaking world, MacLean's best-known poem is ''[[Hallaig]]'', a meditation on a Raasay village which had been cleared of its inhabitants.{{r|Easter|p=442}} Raasay was cleared between 1852 and 1854 under [[George Rainy]]; most of its inhabitants were forced to emigrate. Many of MacLean's relatives were affected, and Hallaig was one of the villages to be depopulated. The poem was written a century later, during MacLean's time in Edinburgh,<ref name="Edinburgh" />{{r|Hallaig|p=418}} and originally published in 1954 in the Gaelic-language magazine ''[[Gairm]]''.<ref name=publications/> Beginning with the famous line, "Time, the deer, is in the wood of Hallaig",{{efn-lr|{{langx|gd|Tha tìm, am fiadh, an coille Hallaig}}}} the poem imagines the village as it was before the Clearances, with the long-dead eternally walking through the trees.{{r|Hallaig|pp=418–9}} It is also filled with local names of individuals and places, which have deeper meanings to those intimately familiar with Raasay oral tradition.{{r|open|p=36}} Unlike most of MacLean's output, ''Hallaig'' has no overt political references,{{r|Czech|p=128-129}} and never directly mentions eviction or clearance.<ref name="two" /> For this reason, it was seen as politically "safer" than others of MacLean's poems. Translated and promoted by Irish Nobel Prize Laureate Seamus Heaney,{{r|Easter|p=13}} ''Hallaig'' achieved "cult status"{{r|Czech|p=134}} and came to symbolize Scottish Gaelic poetry in the English-speaking imagination.{{r|Easter|p=13}}