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Sorley MacLean's Other Clearance Poems

Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2017

Abstract

The article discusses the treatment of the Highland Clearances, specifically the clearances from his home-island of Raasay, in the work of the Gaelic poet Sorley MacLean (Somhairle MacGill-Eain, 1911-1996), not only in his best-known Clearance poem "Hallaig," but in his prose writings, his major early sequence An Cuilithionn (1939, but not fully published till 2011), and several important shorter poems, "Am Putan Airgid" ("The Silver Button"), "'Tha na beanntan gun bhruidhinn,'" and (more fully) "Sgreapadal."